one
explanation, and the marshal sent the spurs home with a great foreboding
at heart.

"He _had_ to fire that shot!" was the quick conjecture. "But why? He is
either in a tight place or else Is up to some fearful deviltry. That was
certainly a woman's cry!" He was using both spur and cuerto now, and his
gallant horse was responding grandly.

But before he reached the little glade, the echoes wakened to a rumbling
roar at the duller concussion of a revolver shot. Then followed that
most unnerving thing, the mourning of a woman for her dead. With a
magnificent leap the horse cleared the brawling torrent and in the edge
of the glade Ballard checked him with a savage oath. Flinging himself
from the saddle, he ran eagerly forward, pulling his revolver as he
went.

In the middle of the glade, beside a little spring which bubbled up
amidst the grass, sat a stylishly-gowned woman holding to her bosom the
head of his best friend. Across the white forehead trickled down a thin
crimson stream which sadly stained and discolored the fawn-colored
riding habit and left its grewsome horror on the lips passionately
pressed to those of the man lying so still and quiet in her rocking
arms.

And ten feet away, with his sightless eyes staring up at the blue sky,
his shirt still smouldering from a powder burn above his heart, lay
Matlock, still clutching the Mauser in his stiffening hand.

Douglass, on dismounting, had picketed the horses and thrown himself at
full length on the grass with his head in Constance's lap. She had
temporarily regained dominion over him and was deliriously happy in
consequence, lavishing upon him all the tenderness of her really
unselfish affection. With tact she induced him to talk of his earlier
life and its vicissitudes, and in the relation he was so frank and
confiding that he was invested with a new glory in her sight. Of his
amours he was considerately reticent, his innate chivalry prompting him
to repress anything which would give her pain, and she was wise enough
to refrain from any embarrassing questions. Their communion was
intimate, and she had not been so happy in many months.

Then by some unfortunate vagary she chanced to refer to his first
difficulty with Matlock, asking him for the real facts in the case, and
the man crouched in the clematis gnashed his teeth at Douglass's
contemptuous reflections upon his cowardice.

"Oh, I took no particular risk," Douglass said carelessly; "the man wa