ily to the
company,--never.

"The sheriff said," Bill continued hastily, as if to preclude any
interruption from the young man,--"the sheriff said he had been
brought into Murphy's Camp three years before, dripping with water, and
sufferin' from perkussion of the brain, and had been cared for generally
by the boys 'round. When I told the sheriff I knowed 'im, I got him to
leave him in my care; and I took him to 'Frisco, Tommy, to 'Frisco,
and I put him in charge o' the best doctors there, and paid his board
myself. There was nothin' he didn't have ez he wanted. Don't look that
way, my dear boy, for God's sake, don't!"

"O Bill," said Islington, rising and staggering to the window, "why did
you keep this from me?"

"Why?" said Bill, turning on him savagely,--"why? because I warn't a
fool. Thar was you, winnin' your way in college; thar was YOU, risin' in
the world, and of some account to it; yer was an old bummer, ez good ez
dead to it,--a man ez oughter been dead afore! a man ez never denied it!
But you allus liked him better nor me," said Bill, bitterly.

"Forgive me, Bill," said the young man, seizing both his hands. "I know
you did it for the best; but go on."

"Thar ain't much more to tell, nor much use to tell it, as I can see,"
said Bill, moodily. "He never could be cured, the doctors said, for he
had what they called monomania,--was always talking about his wife and
darter that somebody had stole away years ago, and plannin' revenge
on that somebody. And six months ago he was missed. I tracked him to
Carson, to Salt Lake City, to Omaha, to Chicago, to New York,--and
here!"

"Here!" echoed Islington.

"Here! And that's what brings me here to-day. Whethers he's crazy or
well, whethers he's huntin' you or lookin' up that other man, you must
get away from here. You mustn't see him. You and me, Tommy, will go away
on a cruise. In three or four years he'll be dead or missing, and then
we'll come back. Come." And he rose to his feet.

"Bill," said Islington, rising also, and taking the hand of his friend,
with the same quiet obstinacy that in the old days had endeared him to
Bill, "wherever he is, here or elsewhere, sane or crazy, I shall seek
and find him. Every dollar that I have shall be his, every dollar that I
have spent shall be returned to him. I am young yet, thank God, and can
work; and if there is a way out of this miserable business, I shall find
it."

"I knew," said Bill, with a surliness that il