roan?"

"Pierre, I command you--"

The light in the blue eyes was as cold and steady as that in the
starved eyes of Jean Paul Victor.

"Hush!" he said calmly. "For the sake of the love that I bear for you,
do not command me."

"Pierre, I have prayed God for you night and morning, and for the sake
of those prayers which are dearer than gold in heaven, stay with me!"

"Dear Father Victor, you also hope for hands that love you to close
your eyes at the end."

And the stern priest dropped his head. He said at last: "I have
nothing saving one great and terrible treasure which I see was
predestined to you. It is the cross of Father Meilan. You have worn
it before. You shall wear it hereafter as your own."

He took from his own neck a silver cross suspended by a slender silver
chain, and the boy, with startled eyes, dropped to his knees and
received the gift.

"It has brought good to all who possessed it, but for every good thing
that it works for you it will work evil on some other. Great is its
blessing and great is its burden. I, alas, know; but you also have
heard of its history. Do you accept it, Pierre?"

"Dear Father, with all my heart."

The colorless hands touched the dark-red hair, and the prophet eyes of
the priest went up.

"God pardon the sins you shall commit."

Pierre crushed the hand of Jean Paul Victor against his lips and rushed
from the room, while the tall priest, staring down at the fingers which
had been kissed, pronounced:

"It is better that he should commit murder with his hands than to slay
in his evil thoughts."

"Can you resign him like this?"

"I have forged a thunderbolt. Father Gabrielle, you are a prophet. It
is too great for my hand. Listen!"

And they heard clearly the sharp clang of a horse's hoofs on the
hard-packed snow, loud at first, but fading rapidly away. The wind,
increasing suddenly, shook the house furiously about them.

It was a north wind, and traveled south before the rider of the strong
roan. Over a thousand miles of plain and hills it passed, and down
into the cattle country of the mountain-desert which the Rockies hem on
one side and the tall Sierras on the other.

It was a trail to try even the endurance of Pierre and the strong roan,
but the boy clung to it doggedly. On a trail that led down from the
edges of the northern mountain the roan crashed to the ground in a
plunging fall, hitting heavily on his knees. He was dead before the
bo