ven through his
fury he heard quickened footsteps--her light, reckless, half-hysterical
laugh--a bound upon the staircase--the hurried unbolting and opening of
distant doors, as the lighter one with which he was struggling at last
yielded to his blind rage, and threw him crashing into the sitting-room.
The back door was wide open. He could hear the rustling and crackling of
twigs and branches in different directions down the hillside, where the
fugitives had separated as they escaped. And yet he stood there for an
instant, dazed and wondering, "What next?"

His eyes fell upon McGee's rifle standing upright in the corner. It was
a clean, beautiful, precise weapon, even to the unprofessional eye,
its long, laminated hexagonal barrel taking a tenderer blue in the
moonlight. He snatched it up. It was capped and loaded. Without a pause
he dashed down the hill.

Only one thought was in his mind now--the crudest, simplest duty. He
was there in McGee's place; he should do what McGee would do. God had
abandoned him, but McGee's rifle remained.

In a few minutes' downward plunging he had reached the river bank. The
tranquil silver surface quivered and glittered before him. He saw what
he knew he would see, the black target of a man's head above it, making
for the Bar. He took deliberate aim and fired. There was no echo to that
sharp detonation; a distant dog barked, there was a slight whisper
in the trees beside him, that was all! But the head of the man was no
longer visible, and the liquid silver filmed over again, without a speck
or stain.

He shouldered the rifle, and with the automatic action of men in great
crises returned slowly and deliberately to the house and carefully
replaced the rifle in its old position. He had no concern for the
miserable woman who had fled; had she appeared before him at the moment,
he would not have noticed her. Yet a strange instinct--it seemed to him
the vaguest curiosity--made him ascend the stairs and enter her
chamber. The candle was still burning on the table with that awful
unconsciousness and simplicity of detail which makes the scene of real
tragedy so terrible. Beside it lay a belt and leather pouch. Madison
Wayne suddenly dashed forward and seized it, with a wild, inarticulate
cry; staggered, fell over the chair, rose to his feet, blindly groped
his way down the staircase, burst into the road, and, hugging the pouch
to his bosom, fled like a madman down the hill.

*****

The bo