and body. Oddly enough, she spoke first of something irrelevant,
inconsequential.

"I fell asleep," she said heavily. "What time is it?"

Stella looked at her watch.

"Half-past four," she answered. "How is Charlie? What happened to him?"

"Monohan shot him."

Stella caught her breath. She hadn't been prepared for that.

"Is he--is he--" she could not utter the words.

"He'll get better. Wait." Linda rose stiffly from her seat. A door in
one side of the room stood ajar. She opened it, and Stella, looking over
her shoulder, saw her brother's tousled head on a pillow. A nurse in
uniform sat beside his bed. Linda closed the door silently.

"Come into the kitchen where we won't make a noise," she whispered.

A fire burned in the kitchen stove. Linda sank into a willow rocker.

"I'm weary as Atlas," she said. "I've been fretting for so long. Then
late yesterday afternoon they brought him home to me--like that. The
doctor was probing for the bullet when I wired you. I was in a panic
then, I think. Half-past four! How did you get here so soon? How could
you? There's no train."

Stella told her.

"Why should Monohan shoot him?" she broke out. "For God's sake, talk,
Linda!"

There was a curious impersonality in Linda's manner, as if she stood
aloof from it all, as if the fire of her vitality had burned out. She
lay back in her chair with eyelids drooping, speaking in dull, lifeless
tones.

"Monohan shot him because Charlie came on him in the woods setting a
fresh fire. They've suspected him, or some one in his pay, of that, and
they've been watching. There were two other men with Charlie, so there
is no mistake. Monohan got away. That's all I know. Oh, but I'm tired.
I've been hanging on to myself for so long. About daylight, after we
knew for sure that Charlie was over the hill, something seemed to let go
in me. I'm awful glad you came, Stella. Can you make a cup of tea?"

Stella could and did, but she drank none of it herself. A dead weight of
apprehension lay like lead in her breast. Her conscience pointed a
deadly finger. First Billy Dale, now her brother, and, sandwiched in
between, the loosed fire furies which were taking toll in bodily injury
and ruinous loss.

Yet she was helpless. The matter was wholly out of her hands, and she
stood aghast before it, much as the small child stands aghast before the
burning house he has fired by accident.

Fyfe next. That was the ultimate, the culmination, which wo