t and approached them.

"You won't have to do that," he said. "I killed 'im this mornin'."

A deadly, sickening hush came over his listeners, and gradually through
it the rythmic strokes of a galloping horse fell upon their ears. Brent
turned and saw Jane. In a dry voice he said:

"The hell you did."

For once the adaptable engineer seemed helpless to rise to the
situation. It was the Colonel who pulled himself together, saying
hurriedly:

"Here's Jane! Go out, Brent, and entertain her! I'll take Dale indoors
and see what this means!"

"I haven't time," the mountaineer irritably replied. "I'm readin', and
can't stop!"

"I'll bet you a cooky you can stop, sir," the old Colonel snapped. "You
come and talk to me! Hurry, Brent!"

Entering the French window to the library he turned nervously to Dale.

"Now, what does this mean?"

"Brent told you," the mountaineer answered. "He told you how the varmint
yelled, an' what he said. This mornin' I went 'foh sun an' laid out near
his cabin. That's all."

The reproach in the Colonel's eyes fell upon Dale like a lash, and he
angrily continued:

"You said you'd do it, didn't you? If I hadn't--or somebody hadn't--he'd
kept on shoutin' those things, an' maybe worse, till she wouldn't have
opened school next yeah! Would she? Then what would I do? I tell you,
Tusk had to be kilt!"

"I was merely angry, and talking, sir," the Colonel protested, with not
the same regard for truth he had formerly boasted.

"An' I was angry an' not talkin'," Dale sullenly retorted.

The silence that followed was broken by the old gentleman's brief
question:

"Dead?"

"I reckon. He went down."

"We must go and see. Come!"

"I ain't got time to fool with 'im," the mountaineer looked restlessly
at the open book and then back at his interrogator. "I've got to study.
You go, if you think you'd ought, an' take some niggers."

The Colonel shuddered: "By God, but you're a cold one!" then hastily
went out to consult the faithful Zack. But the mountaineer reseated
himself at the long mahogany table, and plunged furiously into the maze
of erudition.

CHAPTER XXI

A VOICE AND A TAPER FLAME

Brent, who for some days had not been gracious to the sight of Jane,
went out to meet her in a state of mind so dazed that it bordered on the
humorous. At heart most things were jests with this devil-may-care young
man (it may have been a trait cultivated through sheer necessity) and
whether Da