thing more, Doctor; can you
keep up my strength for awhile?"

"Reasonably well, reasonably well, Howard."

"I am so glad of that because there is much to do before I go.
There is so much that must be done first, and I want you both to
help me."

CHAPTER XL.

THE SHEPHERD'S MISSION.

During the latter part of that night and most of the day, it
rained; a fine, slow, quiet rain, with no wind to shake the wet
from burdened leaf or blade. But when the old shepherd left the
cave by a narrow opening on the side of the mountain, near Sammy's
Lookout, the sky was clear. The mists rolled heavily over the
valley, but the last of the sunlight was warm on the knobs and
ridges.

The old man paused behind the rock and bushes that concealed the
mouth of the underground passage. Not a hundred feet below was the
Old Trail; he followed the little path with his eye until it
vanished around the shoulder of Dewey. Along that way he had come
into the hills. Then lifting his eyes to the far away lines of
darker blue, his mind looked over the ridge to the world that is
on the other side, the world from which he had fled. It all seemed
very small and mean, now; it was so far--so far away.

He started as the sharp ring of a horse's iron shoe on the flint
rocks came from beyond the Lookout, and, safely hidden, he saw a
neighbor round the hill and pass on his way to the store on Roark.
He watched, as horse and rider followed the Old Trail around the
rim of the Hollow; watched, until they passed from sight in the
belt of timber. Then his eyes were fixed on a fine thread of smoke
that curled above the trees on the Matthews place; and, leaving
the shelter of rock and bush, he walked along the Old Trail toward
the big log house on the distant ridge.

Below him, on his left, Mutton Hollow lay submerged in the
drifting mists, with only a faint line of light breaking now and
then where Lost Creek made its way; and on the other side Compton
Ridge lifted like a wooded shore from the sea. A black spot in the
red west shaped itself into a crow, making his way on easy wing
toward a dead tree on the top of Boulder Bald. The old shepherd
walked wearily; the now familiar objects wore a strange look. It
was as though he saw them for the first time, yet had seen them
somewhere before, perhaps in another world. As he went his face
was the face of one crushed by shame and grief, made desperate by
his suffering.

Supper was just over and Young