ay to his house.

He was a type which the Hills will do ill to forget in the rearing of
their sons, a man whose life was clean, and therefore a man difficult to
wrong. I should have been sorry to stand before Nicholas Marsh with a
lie in my mouth. He is gone now to the Country of the Silences. He was a
just man, and to such, even the gods are accustomed to yield the wall.

I followed slowly after the drove, the broad dimensions of Woodford's
plan at last clear in my youthful mind. He had put Ward in his bed, and
out of the way. Then he had sent a stranger to these men with a
dangerous lie corroborated by a bit of manufactured evidence,--a lie
calculated to put any cattleman on his guard, and one that could not be
tracked back to its sources.

Then, to make it sure, Twiggs had come riding like the devil's imps with
some new warning from Cynthia. How could such planning fail? And failed
it had not but for the honour of this gentleman, or perhaps some design
of the Unknowable behind the machinery of the world.

Generation of intriguers! Here are the two factors that wreck you. The
high captains of France overlooked the one in the prosecution of an
obscure subordinate. And Absalom, the first great master of practical
politics, somehow overlooked the other.

In my pocket was the evidence of Cynthia's perfidy, with the envelope
opened, travelling home, as lies are said to. Ward might doubt the
attitude of this woman when she smoothed matters with that dimpled mouth
of hers, or crushed me out with her steel-grey eyes; but he would
believe what she had written when he saw it. Then a doubt began to arise
like the first vapour from the copper pot of the Arabian fisherman.
Could I show it to Ward? Marsh had sent it to Cynthia. Could I even look
at it? I postponed the contest with that genie.

Suicide is not a more deliberate business than cattle driving. A bullock
must never be hurried, not even in the early morning. He must be kept
strolling along no faster than he pleases. If he is hurried, one will
presently have him panting with his tongue out, or down in a fence
corner with the fat melted around his heart. Yet if he is allowed his
natural gait, he will walk a horse to death.

Remember, he carries fifteen hundred pounds, and there are casks of
tallow under his black hide. Besides that, he is an aristocrat
accustomed to his ease. In large droves it is advisable to keep the herd
in as long and narrow a line as possible, a