which she
was concealed. "You have had news, I know," she said, stepping into view
and glancing searchingly into his troubled countenance. "Is he wounded?"
He could have gathered her into his arms and kissed her as she stood
before him, but that the very air seemed charged with impending
disaster. As gently as brevity would permit, he told her of Carrick's
fate. Together they rode swiftly back to where Carrick lay, fighting his
last triumphant adversary, Death himself.

"No Lunnon sights to see," he muttered in his delirium; "no concert
songs to'ear.... Ah, Meg, you was cruel 'ard on poor Tod, but damn you,
I loves you still."

"A woman betrayed him," she said. Carter nodded a grim assent. Her lips
quivered. Her eyes brimmed to the brink with priceless womanly sympathy.
"Perhaps," she said rising and turning away, "perhaps he wouldn't care
for us to know."

Carter drew her back gently. "I don't think he would mind--if you knew.
Poor chap, his has certainly been a hard fate."

Responding to the appeal in their hearts, which penetrated the numbing
faculties, Carrick, in one final effort, threw off the shackles of Death
and stood free for a season. His eyes opened at first without
recognition for the pair bending over him. Then a gradual joy warmed the
cooling embers of his life.

"'Ighness," he cried; the neighborhood of Death stripped his speech to
its native crudeness. "'Ighness, a man carries to 'is grave the face of
one woman in 'is 'eart. Hi knows that much to me sorrow. Captain, 'ere,
beggin' your pardon, loves you, but daren't sye so for fear of 'Is
Majesty. You don't love the King, you love Captain Carter. God bless
'im, 'e's the best man ever breathed. For Gawd's sake, 'Ighness, don't
let 'im carry your sweet face to the grave with 'im unless your love
goes with hit. You two was made for each other."

As a blade loses its sharpness from continuous wear, so dulled the eyes
of Carrick in his combat with Death. In the bitterness of his strife he
struggled to his elbow. Who can tell of the range of one's soul or the
might thereof? On the brink of Eternity, Life wrestled with Death. The
body was to be bared of the soul. Was the soul to be stripped of the
associations it had formed in this existence? Might it not also strive
for a continuance of its entity even as the man struggled for further
living? Does the soul return to a nebulous state without further
initiate perceptions after a life--a span--of activity