."

"Air yew done for?" demanded Tansey, soberly.

"No, no," groaned Byram, "I'm jest winged. He done it, an' he was right.
Didn't he say he'd pay his taxes? He's plumb right. Let him alone, or
he'll come out an' murder us all!"

Byram's voice ceased; Tansey mounted the dark slope, peering among the
brambles, treading carefully.

"Whar be ye, Byram?" he bawled.

But it was ten minutes before he found the young man, quite dead, in the
long grass.

With an oath Tansey flung up his gun and drove a charge of buckshot
crashing through the front door. The door quivered; the last echoes of
the shot died out; silence followed.

Then the shattered door swung open slowly, and McCloud reeled out, still
clutching his rifle. He tried to raise it; he could not, and it fell
clattering. Tansey covered him with his shot-gun, cursing him fiercely.
"Up with them hands o' yourn!" he snarled; but McCloud only muttered and
began to rock and sway in the doorway.

Tansey came up to him, shot-gun in hand. "Yew hev done fur Byram," he
said; "yew air bound to set in the chair for this."

McCloud, leaning against the sill, looked at him with heavy eyes.

"It's well enough for you," he muttered; "you are only a savage; but
Byram went to college--and so did I--and we are nothing but savages like
you, after all--nothing but savages--"

He collapsed and slid to the ground, lying hunched up across the
threshold.

"I want to see the path-master!" he cried, sharply.

A shadow fell across the shot riddled door snow-white in the moonshine.

"She's here," said the game-warden, soberly.

But McCloud had started talking and muttering to himself.

Towards midnight the whippoorwill began a breathless calling from the
garden.

McCloud opened his eyes.

"Who is that?" he asked, irritably.

"He's looney," whispered Tansey; "he gabbles to hisself."

The little path-master knelt beside him. He stared at her stonily.

"It is I," she whispered.

"Is it you, little path-master?" he said, in an altered voice. Then
something came into his filmy eyes which she knew was a smile.

"I wanted to tell you," he began, "I will work out my
taxes--somewhere--for you--"

The path-master hid her white face in her hands. Presently the collie
dog came and laid his head on her shoulder.

IN NAUVOO

The long drought ended with a cloud-burst in the western mountains,
which tore a new slide down the flank of Lynx Peak and scarred the
Gilded Dome