father
afterward. Gandil rose and stretched himself leisurely, yet as he
sauntered toward the door his backward glance at Pierre was black
indeed. He glanced curiously toward Jack--who looked away sharply--and
then turned his eyes to her father.

The latter was considering him with a gloomy, foreboding stare and
considering over and over again, as Pierre le Rouge well knew, the
prophecy of Black Morgan Gandil.

He fell in turn into a solemn brooding, and many a picture out of the
past came up beside him and stood near till he could almost feel its
presence. He was roused by the creaking of the floor beneath the
ponderous step of Jim Boone, who flung the door open and shouted: "Oh,
Morgan."

In the silence he turned and stared back at Pierre.

"What's up with Gandil?"

"God knows, not I."

Pierre rose and ran from the room and around the side of the building.
There by the woodpile lay the prostrate body. It was a mere limp
weight when he turned and raised it in his arms. So he walked back
into the house carrying all that was left of Black Morgan Gandil, and
placed his burden on a bunk at the side of the room.

There had been no outcry from either Jim Boone or his daughter, but
they came quickly to him, and Jacqueline pressed her ear over the heart
of the hurt man.

She said; "He's still alive, but nearly gone. Where's the wound?"

They found it when they drew off his coat--a small cut high on the
right breast, and another lower and more to the left. Either of them
would been fatal, and about each the flesh was discolored where the
hilt of the knife or the fist of the striker had driven home the blade.

They stood back and made no hopeless effort to save him. It was
uncanny that Black Morgan Gandil, after all of his battles, should die
without a struggle in this way. And it had been no cowardly attack
from the rear. Both wounds were in the front. A hope came to them
when his color increased at one time, but it was for only a moment; it
went out again as if some one were erasing paint from his cheeks.

But just as they were about to turn away his body stirred with a slight
convulsion, the eyes opened wide, and he strove to speak. A red froth
came on his lips. He made another desperate effort, and twisting
himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped:
"McGurk--God!" and dropped. He was dead before his head touched the
blanket.

It was Jacqueline who closed the staring eyes,