that had followed months of hope and doubt. It did
not seem as though it had been only two days. It seemed that time was
playing him a trick. Yet he knew that to-day was like yesterday--each
day like its predecessor--that if the hours dragged it was because in
the bitterness of his soul he realized that today could not be--for
him--like the day before yesterday; and that succeeding days gave no
promise of restoring to him the happiness that he had lost.

He saw the sun rising above the rim of hills that surrounded the flat;
he climbed to the rock upon which he had sat--with her--watching the
shadows retreat to the mountains, watching the sun stream down into the
clearing and upon the Radford cabin. But there was no longer beauty in
the picture--for him. Hereafter he would return to that life that he
had led of old; the old hard life that he had known before his brief
romance had given him a fleeting glimpse of what might have been.

Many times, when his hopes had been high, he had felt a chilling fear
that he would never be able to reach the pinnacle of promise; that in
the end fate would place before him a barrier--the barrier in the shape
of his contract with Stafford, that he had regretted many times.

Mary Radford would never believe his protest that he had not been hired
to kill her brother. Fate, in the shape of Leviatt, had forestalled
him there. Many times, when she had questioned him regarding the hero
in her story, he had been on the point of taking her into his
confidence as to the reason of his presence at the Two Diamond, but he
had always put it off, hoping that things would be righted in the end
and that he would be able to prove to her the honesty of his intentions.

But now that time was past. Whatever happened now she would believe
him the creature that she despised--that all men despised; the man who
strikes in the dark.

This, then, was to be the end. He could not say that he had been
entirely blameless. He should have told her. But it was not the end
that he was now contemplating. There could be no end until there had
been an accounting between him and Leviatt. Perhaps the men who had
shot Ben Radford in the back would never be known. He had his
suspicions, but they availed nothing. In the light of present
circumstances Miss Radford would never hold him guiltless.

Until near noon he sat on the rock on the crest of the hill, the lines
of his face growing more grim, his anger slow