om
his bosom he took a revolver, turning the chambers noiselessly as he
felt the caps. He then crept toward the cabin softly and gained the
shed. It was quite dark but for a pencil of light piercing a crack of
the rude, ill-fitting door that opened on the sitting-room. A single
voice not unfamiliar to him, raised in half-brutal triumph, greeted his
ears.

A name was mentioned--his own! His angry hand was on the latch. One
moment more and he would have burst the door, but in that instant
another name was uttered--a name that dropped his hand from the latch
and the blood from his cheeks. He staggered backward, passed his hand
swiftly across his forehead, recovered himself with a gesture of mingled
rage and despair, and, sinking on his knees beside the door, pressed his
hot temples against the crack.

"Do I know Lance Harriott?" said the voice. "Do I know the d----d
ruffian? Didn't I hunt him a year ago into the brush three miles from
the Crossing? Didn't we lose sight of him the very day he turned up yer
at this ranch, and got smuggled over into Monterey? Ain't it the same
man as killed Arkansaw Bob--Bob Ridley--the name he went by in Sonora?
And who was Bob Ridley, eh? Who? Why, you d----d old fool, it was Bob
Fairley--YOUR SON!"

The old man's voice rose querulous and indistinct.

"What are ye talkin' about?" interrupted the first speaker. "I tell you
I KNOW. Look at these pictures. I found 'em on his body. Look at 'em.
Pictures of you and your girl. Pr'aps you'll deny them. Pr'aps you'll
tell me I lie when I tell you HE told me he was your son; told me how he
ran away from you; how you were livin' somewhere in the mountains
makin' gold, or suthin' else, outer charcoal. He told me who he was as
a secret. He never let on he told it to any one else. And when I found
that the man who killed him, Lance Harriott, had been hidin' here, had
been sendin' spies all around to find out all about your son, had been
foolin' you and tryin' to ruin your gal as he had killed your boy, I
knew that HE knew it, too."

"LIAR!"

The door fell in with a crash. There was the sudden apparition of a
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 repo