read his blanket out under the stars, and tucking one
rolled-up corner under his head for a pillow, lay long into the night,
gazing up into the heavens which formed his only roof.

It was a moonlighted evening, and the fleecy clouds we have noted moved
in and out of her path in a stately dance, with winning grace, as
eastern Nautch girls might dance their way into the favor of a haughty
sheik.

Dan at first saw all, but reflected nothing of this beauty in his
thought. His animal nature satisfied, he craved nothing as yet. But
presently memory and remorse knocked for admittance--the twain were
seldom long banished. They sat like skeletons at every banquet. At a
bound thought flew back to that day when his brother had fallen before
his eyes.

Dan groaned as the awful vision loomed before him. He saw again the
trickling blood, the strange, astonished protest on that dying face,
with its eyes turned up to his. That was what he could not bear--that
Will should have believed he did it, even in carelessness. If the
unspoken reproach of that last minute could be removed Dan felt he would
be a free man once more. But that hung over him like a curse.

"I didn't do it, Will!" he moaned half aloud. "I wasn't even fooling
with the trigger, as you thought. If I'd been careless in that way--but
I wasn't. I never see a gun without thinking it may be loaded, and
though we both believed that one wasn't still I was careful. But it
caught either in your sleeve or mine--nobody will ever know, and it
killed you and left me to live on. Who did it, Will? It wasn't you; it
wasn't me. Was it the devil, or was it God himself? What is that awful
Something that makes things happen just when you're guarding against
'em? For that's what I was doing. I had just looked up to caution you
when you pressed so close, and then came the stroke!" He groaned again,
as if in physical pain, then presently went on in a moaning voice: "Oh,
Will, if you can hear me, believe me and not what other folks may say.
They all believe it was me, but that I was so crazy over it I couldn't
bear to own up; and the doctor bid them let me alone or I should go mad.
But Will, it is not true. You must hear me, wherever you are. _It is not
true!_"

He broke into a passion of sobs, and rolling over, muffled his face in
the blanket's folds. Even in that solitude some living being might hear,
and the thought that anyone should ever witness this agony of soul,
should ever lay the