ill, and his old patient, resigned look
returned. Key shuddered. There was some injury to the spine. The man
was paralyzed.

"I can't get up, Mr. Key," he said in a faint but untroubled voice,
"nor seem to move my arms, but you'll just allow that I've shook hands
with ye--all the same."

"How did this happen?" said Key anxiously.

"Thet's wot gets me! Sometimes I reckon I know, and sometimes I don't.
Lyin' thar on thet ledge all last night, and only jest able to look
down into the old valley, sometimes it seemed to me ez if I fell over
and got caught in the rocks trying to save my wife; but then when I kem
to think sensible, and know my wife wasn't there at all, I get
mystified. Sometimes I think I got ter thinkin' of my wife only when
this yer young gal thet's bin like an angel to me kem here and dragged
me off the ledge, for you see she don't belong here, and hez dropped on
to me like a sperrit."

"Then you were not in the house when the shock came?" said Key.

"No. You see the mill was filled with them fellers as the sheriff was
arter, and it went over with 'em--and I"--

"Alice," said Key, with a white face, "would you mind going to my
horse, which you will find somewhere near yours, and bringing me a
medicine case from my saddle-bags?"

The innocent girl glanced quickly at her companion, saw the change in
his face, and, attributing it to the imminent danger of the injured
man, at once glided away. When she was out of hearing, Key leaned
gravely over him:--

"Collinson, I must trust you with a secret. I am afraid that this poor
girl who helped you is the sister of the leader of that gang the
sheriff was in pursuit of. She has been kept in perfect ignorance of
her brother's crimes. She must NEVER know them--nor even know his
fate! If he perished utterly in this catastrophe, as it would seem--it
was God's will to spare her that knowledge. I tell you this, to warn
you in anything you say before her. She MUST believe, as I shall try
to make her believe, that he has gone back to the States--where she
will perhaps, hereafter, believe that he died. Better that she should
know nothing--and keep her thought of him unchanged."

"I see--I see--I see, Mr. Key," murmured the injured man. "Thet's wot
I've been sayin' to myself lyin' here all night. Thet's wot I bin
sayin' o' my wife Sadie,--her that I actooally got to think kem back to
me last night. You see I'd heerd from one o' those fellars that a