tion of the
demoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks of
hair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror filled the
room. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled precipitately. The
man who had spoken sprang toward his rifle in the chimney corner. But
the movement was his last; a blinding flash and shattering report
interposed between him and his weapon. The impulse carried him forward
headlong into the fire, that hissed and spluttered with his blood, and
Lance Harriott, with his smoking pistol, strode past him to the door.
Already far down the trail there were hurried voices, the crack and
crackling of impending branches growing fainter and fainter in the
distance. Lance turned back to the solitary living figure--the old man.

Yet he might have been dead too, he sat so rigid and motionless, his
fixed eyes staring vacantly at the body on the hearth. Before him on
the table lay the cheap photographs, one evidently of himself, taken in
some remote epoch of complexion, one of a child which Lance recognized
as Flip.

"Tell me," said Lance hoarsely, laying his quivering hand on the table,
"was Bob Ridley your son?"

"My son," echoed the old man in a strange, far-off voice, without
turning his eyes from the corpse,--"my son--is--is--is there!" pointing
to the dead man. "Hush! Didn't he tell you so? Didn't you hear him say
it? Dead--dead--shot--shot!"

"Silence! are you crazy, man?" interposed Lance, tremblingly; "that is
not Bob Ridley, but a dog, a coward, a liar, gone to his reckoning.
Hear me! If your son _was_ Bob Ridley, I swear to God I never knew it,
now or--or--_then_. Do you hear me? Tell me! Do you believe me? Speak!
You shall speak!"

He laid his hand almost menacingly on the old man's shoulder. Fairley
slowly raised his head. Lance fell back with a groan of horror. The
weak lips were wreathed with a feeble imploring smile, but the eyes
wherein the fretful, peevish, suspicious spirit had dwelt were blank
and tenantless; the flickering intellect that had lit them was blown
out and vanished.

Lance walked toward the door and remained motionless for a moment,
gazing into the night. When he turned back again toward the fire his
face was as colorless as the dead man's on the hearth; the fire of
passion was gone from his beaten eyes; his step was hesitating and
slow. He went up to the table.

"I say, old man," he said, with a strange smile and an odd, premature
suggestion