rt
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?" repeated 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 of the infinite weariness of death in his voice, "you
wouldn't mind giving me this, would you?" and he took up the picture of
Flip. The old man nodded repeatedly. "Thank you," said Lance. He went
to the door, paused a moment, and returned. "Good-by, old man," he
said, holding out his hand. Fairley took it with a childish smile. "He's
dead," said the old man