Suddenly he fancied he heard the sound of horses' hoofs in the clay road along the hillside, now softened with the light rain. The sound ceased as suddenly as it began, and it occurred to him that it might be one of the robbers returning. The lantern was burning low, but as a precaution he now turned it quite out. There were some cartridges in Allan's pocket; he felt for them and decided to bring the gun out of the cabin. But before he could put this decision into effect he observed the form of a man moving silently but briskly toward the cabin. He held his breath and remained obscured in the bushes. Dimly he discerned the form stop at the door and peer into the darkness.

There was no doubt in the mind of Harris as to the evil intent of the visitor. He had come on horseback near the building, and had then dismounted and stole up to it on foot. That, in itself was sufficiently incriminating. One who was riding through the mountains on a legitimate errand, and who knew nothing of the night's affray, would take no such precautions. Unarmed as he was, Harris resolved that the robber, probably the murderer of his son, should not on any account escape him. With the blanket which he had brought to cover Allan was a bag in which they had carried oats for their horses; this he found in the darkness, and stole after his victim. He overtook him standing at the door, in apparent hesitancy whether to enter the building. Without an instant's warning Harris threw the bag about his head, and with a quick twist of his powerful wrist had his prisoner securely gagged. Throwing him violently to the ground, he tied the sack in a hard knot, and, despite all struggles, dragged him back to where Allan lay. Here he relighted the lantern, and, cutting part of the blanket into strips with his pocket-knife, securely tied his captive hand and foot. At first the prisoner tried to talk, but he could not speak intelligibly through the closely-drawn sack, and presently he gave up and lay in silence in the wet grass. And again the leaden night wore on, broken only by occasional gurglings in the throat of Allan, or futile struggles by the prisoner. Harris felt little curiosity concerning the identity of the man in gags before him, or the victim of Allan's gun in the doorway. They were absolute strangers to him, and he even feared that if he should look into the face of the one that still lived his anger over the assault upon Allan would burst all bounds and he would kill his victim on the spot. He was slowly forced to the conclusion that Riles and Gardiner had also met with foul play, and that no help was now to be expected from that quarter. The light rain had drifted past, and bright stars gleamed through great rents in the shattered clouds. The gibbous moon, too, looked down, and its cold light intensified the shadows. The night grew colder, and Harris spread his own outer garments upon his son, and at last lay down with Allan in his arms that he might communicate heat from his body to the struggling frame so sorely robbed of blood. And even in his distress and his terrific fear for Allan there came some reminiscence of old delight at the feel of the boy's limbs against his, and fleet-footed memory ran back again to the childhood of Allan. But on its way it met the childhood of Beulah, and conjured up the mother-face leaning in tenderness over the sick-beds of infancy. And John Harris buried his face in the heaving chest of his child and wept in his grief and loneliness.

Just as the first bars of grey in the eastern sky proclaimed approaching dawn, the sound of horse's hoofs came distinctly up the valley. Harris drew himself into a sitting posture, and listened. Allan was still breathing, and apparently with less effort than earlier in the night. The sound of the horse came nearer and nearer. At last it was in the road just below, and a moment later would have passed by had not Harris called out. His voice sounded strange and distant in his own ears, and cost him an unwonted effort.

Sergeant Grey instantly swung his horse from the road and, dismounting, proceeded in the direction of the voice.

Harris told his story with such coherence as he could. He and his son had come up into the hills to arrange for the purchase of a property which they had become interested in through a third party, Gardiner. They carried with them a large sum of money as proof of the sincerity of their intentions. At this little cabin they were to be joined by Gardiner and by another, named Riles, who also was taking an interest in the property. As they waited in the cabin, and as he, Harris, slept after his long drive, they were suddenly set upon by outlaws. Allan shot one down—the body still lay in the doorway—but was himself badly wounded, and had not spoken since. Harris had encountered another, but after a severe fight the robber had escaped. The little black bag in which the money was carried was gone with all its contents. Although he had waited all night in great anxiety, Gardiner and Riles had failed to appear, and it could only be supposed that they too had met with foul play. But some hours after the assault one of the party had returned, dismounted from his horse at some distance, and stolen softly up to the shanty. Harris had followed him, and, taking him by surprise, had been able to make him prisoner.

Sergeant Grey looked from Harris to Allan, and then to the prisoner, who seemed to lie in a semi-conscious condition amid his bonds and gags.

"You were foolish to come into the hills with so much money alone," he said. "I would have been at your service for the asking, and this would not have happened. But now that it has happened, the first thing is to provide for the wounded man, and the next is to place this suspect in custody. And you will need some toning up yourself after your night's experience. Then we will have a full investigation. I know a rancher's house a few miles down the valley where you and your son will have the best attention."

The mounted policeman made a brief examination of Allan, as best he could in the grey dawn, for the lantern now had no oil. "He has not bled very much," he said, "He has a strong frame and ought to have a fighting chance. I will just have a look at the scene of the crime, and then we will move him."

He made a hurried survey of the cabin, merely satisfying himself that the man in the doorway was quite dead, and then, with Harris's assistance, quickly found the horses and harnessed them to the buggy. He also found another horse near the roadway, saddled and bridled. "We will make the prisoner ride his own horse," he said, "while you take your son in the buggy."

They placed the wounded and still unconscious Allan in the buggy as gently as they could, and then Grey gave his attention to the prisoner. Having searched his clothing for weapons, he cut away the bonds that securely held his arms and feet, and released the sack from his half-choked throat. The man writhed and gasped for fresh air, and the policeman drew the sack away and revealed the face of Jim Travers.



CHAPTER XVIII

CONVERGING TRAILS

Beulah Harris raised her arms above her head and drank in the fresh mountain air that flooded through the open window. A smoky red, with brighter shafts of yellow behind, streamed up from the eastern sky and sent a glow of burnt-orange colour through her bedroom. The girl stretched her spread fingers to the limit of their reach, and with extended toes sought the iron bars at the foot of the bed, filling her lungs with the fresh foothill ozone. Then she dropped her hands, palm upward, with the backs of her finger-tips resting on her eyes, and felt that it was good to be alive.

They had been great times—wonderful times—these weeks spent in the freedom and harmony of the Arthurses' household. Mr. and Mrs. Arthurs—Uncle Fred and Aunt Lilian, as she now called them—had opened their hearts and their home to Beulah from the first. Indeed, the girl was often conscious of their gaze upon her, and at times she would look up quickly and surprise a strange, wistful look of yearning in their eyes—a look that they tried very hard to hide from her. They wanted to leave her free to live her own life—to shape her career, for a time at least, wholly in accordance with her impulses.

And such a life as she had lived! Arthurs had at once placed a horse at her disposal, and with a fierce delight at the leap she was taking through conventions she swung her right leg over the saddle and sat to place like any man. Although born and raised on a farm, horseback riding was to her something of a novelty, and the assumption of the masculine position was a positive epoch in her career. How the people of Plainville would have been scandalized if they could have witnessed her shocking familiarity with a horse! She thought of an English girl who had been cut by the good society of Plainville because she dared to ride like a biped instead of a mermaid. And she laughed in a wild exultant freedom, while the wind whipped her hair about her shoulders, and she felt her mount firm beneath her as they cantered across the brown foothills.

Such hills they were! In her native plains they would have been mountains of themselves, wonders of Nature to point out to strangers and to hold in a kind of awe across the country-side, but here they were foothills, mere fragments dropped from the trowel of the Builder as He reared the majestic Rockies behind. And though she often in the early morning, or at sunset, or when the moon was full and white, feasted her eyes and her soul on the cold splendour of the mighty range, it was to the warm brown foothills, with their stubbling of little trees and their solemn warts of grey-green rock, that her heart turned with something of human affection. At first Uncle Fred, or Aunt Lilian, or, a little later, one of the two cowboys rode with her on her expeditions, but her prairie sense of direction quickly adapted itself to her new surroundings, and she soon learned to keep a keen eye for the precipitous cut-banks that drop sheer from a level plain and lie as unsuspected in the saffron sunlight as a coyote among the ripened willows. There were quicksands, too—spots where the water sprang from the hillside in a crystal stream and in a few yards soaked into the kneady earth as in a sponge—but all these places were fenced; even in Alberta, where cattle grow like rabbits on the range, the paving of sink-holes with beef steers is an expensive expedient. So Beulah quickly got her foothill sense, and in a week was riding, care-free and exultant, across the ranges as her heart listed or her horse preferred.

One morning, just as the first grey of dawn mottled the darkness of her chamber, Beulah heard her door open, and through the uncertain light she discerned Arthurs gently entering with a rifle in his hand. She sat up, alert, but not afraid; the tingling health in her veins left no place for fear and suffered no foolishness on the part of her nervous system.

"What is it, Uncle Fred?" she whispered.

"H-s-h," he cautioned. "You know we have been losing calves with the timber wolves? Well, there are two of the murderers just across from the corral. I thought you might want to see them."

In an instant her feet were on the floor, and, hand in hand, she and Arthurs stole to the window. At first her eyes could distinguish nothing in the darkness, but by following Arthurs' index finger she at last located two gaunt, shaggy creatures a little way up the hillside beyond the corral, and a couple of hundred yards from the house.

"However did you know they were there?" she whispered. "You must have cat's eyes. I could hardly see them when you pointed them out."

"Not cat's eyes, Beulah," he answered. "Just rancher's eyes. I heard the horses snorting, and I fancied there were visitors. Now, will you take first shot?"

"Oh, that would be a shame. They would get away, and besides, I might kill a horse."

"Well, won't press it this time," said Arthurs, "because I have a little personal score to settle with these fellows. I guess I have about five hundred dollars invested in each of them."

The wolves were moving leisurely about on the hillside, showing no disposition to run away, but apparently afraid to approach closer to the ranch buildings. Arthurs leaned his rifle across the window sill and took steady aim, while the girl held her breath with excitement. Then there was a quick flash, that shut the scene momentarily from their eyes; the next moment they saw one of the wolves leap into the air and fall, a sprawling mass, upon the ground, while the other darted with the speed of a greyhound toward the neighbouring bushes. Arthurs followed him with a bullet, but even so fine a marksman could have found him only by chance in that uncertain light.

"Well, I guess there's a widow in Wolfville this morning," said Arthurs, as he leisurely threw the discharged cartridge from the barrel. "My apologies, Miss Beulah, for this somewhat unconventional call and the interruption of your beauty sleep."

But Beulah was standing, wrapped in admiration. "Oh, Uncle Fred," she exclaimed. "You're just wonderful. If I could only shoot like that!"

"It's all a matter of training," he told her. "Of course, you must have good eyes and steady nerves, but you have those already. The rifle is yours whenever you want it, and all the ammunition you can carry. There's just one stipulation—for the first week shoot only at foothills, and, remember, aim low."

So Beulah became a rifle enthusiast, and it astonished her how rapidly she improved in marksmanship. With a little instruction from Arthurs and the cowboys in the matter of sighting and holding her weapon, she developed quickly from a stage of dangerous uncertainty in her gunnery to one of almost expert accuracy. Then she made of the rifle a companion on her horseback excursions, to the destruction of gophers, rabbits, and even a badger and a coyote. It was a brave day when she rode into the corral with a coyote strung across her saddle.

The river near by teemed with trout, and the girl soon caught the fascination of the angler. Mrs. Arthurs had a pair of high rubber boots, which she used when she herself went whipping the blue water, and, anchored in these as far out as she dared go into the gravel-bottomed stream, the girl laced the cold current back and forth. And the wild exultation of her first bite! The fish darted up and down stream, pulling out line faster than she could reel it in, and Beulah, in her excitement, waded deeper into the stream as she followed the quivering line. But mountain streams are treacherous; one step too far plunged her into twenty feet of water, and the next moment she was spinning round and round in the current. She had learned to swim a few strokes in the creek on her father's farm, and her meagre skill now stood her in good stead, for she was able to keep afloat until the current threw her against a gravel bar that jutted into the river. She dragged herself ashore, very wet, and of a sudden, very frightened, and sat down on the warm stones. It was here that she recorded another resolution; she would learn to swim—not a feeble stroke or two, but to be master of this river which had so nearly mastered her. "I will do it," she said. "I will swim it across and back, if it takes till December, and—bur-r-r-rh—it's cold enough now." Then it occurred to her that there was no better time to start than the present. She looked out a place where the current was not too strong, and where there were no treacherous rock-splits in the bottom, spread her wet clothing to dry in the sun, and for an hour fought the cold current at its own game.

It is not recorded how it came about, but Arthurs passed the word among the ranch hands that a certain stretch of river bank was sacred from all intrusion.

But it was in the life of the home, even more than in the joyous freedom of the out-of-doors, that Beulah found her great delight. The Arthurs, she knew, were wealthy—many times richer than her father, who passed as a wealthy man among the farmers of Plainville. But with the Arthurs wealth was merely an incident—a pleasant but by no means essential by-product of their lives. They lived simply, but well; they worked honestly, but did not slave; and in all their living and working they shed a kindliness and courtesy that communicated itself to all with whom they came in contact. The cowboys, Beulah soon discovered, were as unlike the cowboys of fiction and of her imagination as a Manitoba steer is unlike his Alberta brother; they did not carry revolvers, nor swagger in high boots, nor rip the air with their profanity; and their table manners reminded her of George and Harry Grant, and the Grants were outstanding examples of right living in the Plainville district. And Mrs. Arthurs, gentle and kind in all her doings, and yet firm and strong and calm, she was—such a woman, Beulah told herself, as her own mother might have been, had her soul not been crushed under a load of unceasing labour. But, most of all, it was to Fred Arthurs that the heart of the young girl turned. Whether he sat over his desk at his letters, or dispensed hospitality at his table (for all who passed up or down the valley, as a matter of course, stopped for a meal at the Arthurses), or cantered across the foothills, or shouted behind his lagging herds (such shouting as it was, fit to split the canyons!}, or played ball with the boys in the evening, or discussed theology with the travelling missionary, or philosophy with his book-worm neighbour from across the river, or read poetry with his wife on the Sunday afternoons, or sang with his great voice in the mellow, yellow eventide, or—most of all—when he looked at Beulah with his fine eyes, and she caught the mirrored reflection of the hunger in his soul, she felt that here was a man who had lived his life to the uttermost and would go on living it through all eternity. She only half guessed what his thoughts toward her were—she did not know that Fred and Lilian Arthurs had at last agreed that they could do better than leave their wealth to charity, and that a new will was soon to be drawn—but to her he seemed pure gold, and a gentleman to his last gesture. And she vowed one night that if ever she met a single man like Fred Arthurs she would marry him although all the canons and conventions of Christendom stood between them.

And then, quite unexpected, it came upon her, and thrilled her frame from toe to temple. Jim Travers! It had been in the background of her mind for months, the centre of the subconscious processes which culminated in this revelation. Yes, Fred Arthurs at twenty-five must have been such a man as Jim Travers. Jim Travers at fifty would be such a man as Fred Arthurs. She was absolutely sure of it. Jim was living his own life, seeking out that which was worth while, culling the incidental from the essential, just as Fred Arthurs must have done. She remembered with sudden joy how Jim had held a little kindness to her of greater moment than the impatient engine in the plough-field; the scores of little labours he had undertaken, not as a sacrifice, but as a privilege—as his contribution to human happiness. She would marry Jim Travers. The strange part of it was her sudden certainty that she should marry him. She found herself enveloped in a flame of possession, a feeling that he was hers—hers now, this minute, and hers for ever. Beulah was a fatalist, although she had never analyzed her own beliefs enough to know it, but she knew that Destiny had linked her life with his and that Destiny would not be balked. Her mind had been feeling its way, through the darkness of months, to this sudden ecstasy, but now that she had reached it she felt that it could never, never fail her. Her sense of possession, of mergement, was complete; she felt that already their souls had mingled irrevocably and indistinguishably.

The arrival of her mother at the Arthurses' ranch had brought fresh joy to Beulah's life. She saw the colour coming back to the old face, the frame straightening up a little, the light rekindling in the eye, the spring returning to the instep. She had not thought that her mother, after twenty-five years of unprotesting submission, had still the nerve to place a limit on that submission, and the discovery had surprised and delighted her. True, Mary Harris let it be known that she was only on a visit, and in due course would return to her home; but Beulah knew the die had been cast, and things could never again be quite as they were. And Beulah told her secret, and her mother just kissed her and let a tear or two fall in her hair.

So this morning, as the girl stretched her young limbs, rounding with life and energy, and the burnt-orange glow of sunrise suffused the room and lit the pink tissues of her slender fingers, she rested in the deep peace which, ever since her revelation, had enveloped her about. For a minute she let her mind dwell on the picture she carried in her brain, until the association became too keen and threatened to overwhelm her from very tenderness; then she sprang from her bed, and, flipping the window-blind to the top, drank in the beauty of the valley through the open window. Her bedroom had windows both to the east and the west; and it was her custom to awaken early and feast on the glory as it surged up the valley, and then, turning, watch the long waves of light sink slowly down the white mountains. And this morning, when she thought the first beams must be gilding the highest peaks, she turned to the westward window and saw the light playing under a Chinook arch across a segment of sky so soft and near she could almost feel it with extended fingers. And then a sound caught her ear, and up the trail she saw two men on horseback, a mounted policeman and another, and behind them other men driving in a buggy.

By intuition Beulah knew that a mishap had occurred. The Arthurses' ranch was the first abode of real civilization on the way out from the mountains, and it was nothing unusual for a lumberman with a chopped foot, or a prospector caught in sliding rock, or a river-driver crushed between logs, or a hunter the victim of his own marksmanship, to come limping or riding down the trail to this haven of first aid. Quickly she drew on her simple clothing and hurried downstairs, but Arthurs was already at the door. The little party came into the yard, and the policeman rode up to the door. The other horseman sat with his back to the house; his hands were chained together in front of him.

"Good-morning, Sergeant Grey," said Arthurs. "You're early out."

The sergeant saluted. The salutation was intended for Arthurs, but at the moment the policeman's eye fell on Beulah, and even the discipline of the Force could not prevent a momentary turning of the head.

"I've a badly hurt man here," he said, "a man who will need your hospitality and care for some days. There was a shooting up the valley last night. His father is here, too, unhurt physically, but on the verge of collapse, if I am not mistaken."

"We will bring both of them in at once," said Arthurs. "Beulah, will you call Lilian, and your mother, too? They may be needed. But who is the third?" he continued, turning to Grey.

"A prisoner. It seems the older man overpowered him. Now let us get this poor fellow in."

The policeman beckoned and Harris drove the buggy up to the door. Arthurs glanced at him with a casual "Good-morning," but the next instant his eyes were riveted on the visitor. "John Harris!" he exclaimed, taking a great stride forward and extending his strong arm. "Man, John, I'm glad to see you, but not in these troubles."

Harris took his hand in a silent clasp, and there was a warmth in it that set his heart beating as it had not for years. "It's hard, Fred," he managed to say in a dry voice, "but it's good to have you by."

Arthurs bent over Allan, who was half sitting, half lying, in the buggy. His face was sapped and grey in the growing light. Tenderly the three men lifted him out. "Take him straight upstairs," said Arthurs. "It will save moving him again." Both spare-rooms in the house were occupied, but Arthurs led the way into Beulah's, and they laid the wounded boy on the white bed.

Arthurs heard Beulah in the hall. "Take off his clothes, Grey," he said, and turned to the doorway. "Where's your mother, Beulah?" he asked in a low voice, closing the bedroom door behind him.

"Dressing." The girl looked in his face, and drew back with a little cry. "What's the matter, Uncle Fred? What's wrong?"

"A friend of mine has been hurt, and an old friend of your mother's. She must not see him just now. You will arrange that?"

"Yes. But I must see him—I must help."

Beulah hurried to the room where her mother was rapidly dressing, "A man has been hurt, mother," she said, with suppressed excitement. "We need hot water. Will you start a fire in the range?"

Mary Harris mistook Beulah's emotion for natural sympathy over a suffering creature, and hurried to the kitchen. Mrs. Arthurs was whispering with her husband in the hall, but a moment later joined Mary at the range.

Then Beulah entered the room. The policeman was speaking to Arthurs. "I must go into town now with my prisoner," he was saying. "I will send out a doctor at once, and in the meantime I know you will do everything possible."

Beulah turned her eyes to the bed. A man was lying there, and an old man was sitting beside it. At the second glance she recognized him, but in an instant she had herself under control. She walked with a steady step to the bed and looked for a full minute in her brother's face. Then she looked at her father.

"What have you done to him?" she said.

He threw out his hand feebly. "You do well to ask me that," he said. "I take all the blame." He raised his face slowly until his eyes met hers. They were not the eyes she had known. They were the eyes of a man who had been crushed, who had been powdered between the wheels of Fate. The old masterful quality, the old indomitable will that stirred her anger and admiration were gone, and in their place were coals of sorrow and ashes of defeat. For a moment she held back; then, with arms outstretched, she fell upon her father's breast.

And then he felt his strength return. He drew her to him as all that remained in the world; crushed her to him; then, very gently, released her a little...He found his fingers threading her fine hair, as they had loved to do when she was a little child.

She sank to her knees beside him, and at last she looked up in his face. "Forgive me, my father," she whispered.

He kissed her forehead and struggled with his voice. "We all make mistakes, Beulah," he said. "I have made mine this twenty-five years, and there—there is the price!"

His words turned Beulah's thought to Allan, and the necessity for action brought her to her feet. "We must save him," she cried. "We must, and we will! Is the policeman gone? We must have the best doctors from Calgary." Looking about she found that Grey and Arthurs had left the room. They had slipped out to leave father and child alone with their emotion, but she found them at the front of the house.

She seized the policeman by the arm. "You must get us a doctor—the best doctor in the country," she pled. "We will spare nothing—"

"My guest, Miss Harris, Sergeant Grey," said Arthurs, and the policeman deftly converted her grasp into a handshake.

"Mr. Arthurs has told me the injured man is your brother. He shall want for nothing. And the sooner I go the sooner you will have help."

"Your prisoner seems docile enough," Arthurs remarked, as the policeman swung on to his horse.

"Rather a puzzler," said Grey. "Doesn't look the part, but was caught in the act, or next thing to it, and his revolver was found lying on the spot where the young man was shot. By the way, I had almost forgotten. One of the robbers was shot and killed. I had to leave his body, but I wish you would send a man up to stay about the place until I can get a coroner out here."

"Robbers, did you say?" demanded Beulah. "Then it was for robbery?"

"Yes, Miss Harris. It seems your father had a large sum of money on him. We have found no trace of it yet, but it is not likely that more than two were implicated, and as one was shot on the spot this other must know where the money is. We will bring it out of him in due time."

So saying he rode down to the gate, thanked the cowboy who had been keeping an eye on the prisoner, and the two started off at a smart trot down the trail.



CHAPTER XIX

PRISONERS OF FATE

Beulah returned to the house to minister to her brother, but Mrs. Arthurs stopped her on the stairs.

"Your mother knows," she said. "They are both in the room with Allan."

Her first impulse was to rush in and complete the family circle, but some fine sense restrained her. For distraction she plunged into the task of preparing breakfast.

At length they came down. Beulah saw them on the stairs, and knew that the gulf was bridged.

"Allan is better," her mother said, when she saw the girl. "He has asked for you." And the next minute Beulah was on her knees by the white bed, caressing the locks that would fall over the pale forehead.

"How did I get here, Beulah?" he whispered. "How did we all get here? What has happened?"

"You have been hurt, Allan," she said. "You have been badly hurt, but you are going to get well again. When you are stronger we will talk about it, but at present you must be still and rest."

"Lie still and rest," he repeated. "How good it is to lie still and rest!"

Later in the day the pain in his wound began to give much discomfort, but he was able to swallow some porridge with pure cream, and his breath came easily. His father stayed about the house, coming every little while to look in upon son and daughter, and as Allan's great constitution gave evidence of winning the fight a deep happiness came upon John Harris. He was able to sleep for a short time, and in the afternoon suggested a walk with his wife. Beulah saw that they were arm in arm as they disappeared in the trees by the river.

"I haven't told you all yet," Harris said to her. "I have done even worse than you suppose, but in some way it doesn't seem so bad to-day. Last night I was in Gethsemane."

It was strange to hear a word suggestive of religion from his lips. Harris had not renounced religion; he had merely been too busy for it. But this word showed that his mind had been travelling back over old tracks.

"And to-day we are in Olivet," she answered, tenderly. "What matters if—if everything's all right?"

"If only Allan—," he faltered.

"Allan will get well," she said. "When he could withstand the first shock he will get well. Of course he must have attention, but he is in the right place for that."

"The Arthurses are wonderful people," he ventured, after a pause. "Mary, they have found something that we missed."

"But we have found it now John. We are going to take time to live. That is where we made our mistake."

There was another pause, broken only by the rustle of leaves and the rushing of the river.

"Beulah was right," he said, at last. "Beulah is a wonderful girl, and a beautiful."

"She will not be wanting to go back home with us," said the mother.

"So much the better. Mary, Mary, we have no home to go back to!"

She looked at him with a sudden puzzled, half-frightened expression. "No home, John? No home? You don't mean that?"

He nodded and turned his face away. "I said I hadn't told you all," he managed at length..."I sold the farm."

She was sitting on a fallen log, very trim, and grey, and small, but she seemed suddenly to become smaller and greyer still.

"Sold the old farm," she repeated, mechanically.

"Yes, I sold the old farm," he said again, as if finding some delight in goading himself with the repetition. "I thought I saw a chance to make a lot of money if only I had some ready cash to turn in my hand, and I sold it. I thought I would be rich and then I would be happy. But they took the money last night. They found out about it some way, and took it, and nearly killed our boy. Mary, you worked hard all your life, and to-day you have nothing. I brought you to this."

She looked with unseeing eyes through the trees at the fast-running water. Her thoughts were with the old home, with the ideals they had cherished when they founded it, with the hardships and the sorrow, and the sickness and the pain, and the joy that had hallowed it as no other spot in all the universe—the place where their first love had nursed them in its tenderness, where they had sat hand in hand in the gathering dusk, drinking the ripple of the water and the whirr of the wild duck's wing; where she had gone down into the valley of the shadow and their little children had come into their arms. And it was gone. He had sold it. Without so much as by-your-leave from the partner of his labours and his life he had sold it and left them destitute.

She saw it all, and for the moment her heart shrank within her. But she saw, too, the futility of it all. She might have upbraided him; she might have returned in part the sorrows he had forced upon her, for he was wounded now and could not strike back. But she rose and stretched her arms toward him.

"You said I had nothing, John. You are wrong. I have you. I have everything!"

..."And it was to you, beloved, to you, a woman of such great soul, that I could do this thing...I should be utterly wretched...But I'm not." He spoke slowly and deliberately, as one having ample time, and with the diction of earlier years. "I should be scouring the valleys with a troop of men, hunting for our money. But I'm not. It seems such a puny thing, it's hardly worth the while—except for the happiness it might bring to you, and Beulah."...

They sat long in the sunshine of the warm autumn afternoon, living again through sweet, long-forgotten days, and already planning for their future. Harris would again exercise homestead right, and with Allan to take up land alongside they should have comfort and happiness. They would go back to the beginning; they would start over again; and this time they would not stray from the path.

When they returned to the house it was almost evening, and they found the doctor from town busy over Allan. "Would have killed nine men out of ten," he told Harris, quite frankly; "but this boy is the tenth. He's badly hurt, but he'll pull through, if we can arrest any infection. His constitution and his clean blood will save him."

Before the doctor left Arthurs inquired if the police had any further details of the crime. Harris appeared to have lost interest in everything except the members of his family.

"Quite a mystery," said the doctor. "I understand one of the robbers was shot, and I will go on up from here to make an examination, as coroner. To-morrow the police will bring out a jury, and a formal verdict will be returned. A systematic search will also be undertaken to recover the money, as I understand that you"—turning to Harris—"suffered a heavy financial loss in addition to the injury to your son. Of course, it is impossible to say how many took part in the affair, but it is not likely the outlaws numbered more than two, in which case they are both accounted for. The one captured had no money to speak of in his possession, but he may have cached it somewhere, and when he sees the rope before him it will be likely to make him talk. They seem to have a pretty straight case against him. Not only was he captured practically in the act, but they have another important clue. He owns up to his name frankly enough, and it seems the revolver found on the scene of the crime had his initials, 'J. T.'—Jim Travers, cut in the grip. In fact, he admits the revolver is—. What's wrong, Miss Harris? Are you ill?"

Beulah's breath had stopped at the mention of Travers' name, and she staggered to a chair. Harris, too, was overcome.

"We knew him down East," Beulah explained, when she had somewhat recovered her composure. "I could not have thought it possible!"

"I didn't think he would have carried it that far," said Harris, at length, speaking very slowly and sadly. "Jim, Jim, you've made a worse mistake than mine."

Mary learned of the disclosure in a few minutes, and followed Beulah upstairs.

"You poor child!" she said, as she overtook her daughter.

"It's not me," she shot back. "It's Jim. He must be saved, some way. It's impossible to think—I won't think it, no matter what they say! Let them find what they like!...But he's in a hole, and we've got to get him out."

The mother shook her head with some recollection of the blindness of love. And yet her own heart refused to accept any idea of guilt on the part of Travers.

"I want to be alone, mother," said Beulah. "I want to be alone, to think. I'm going down by the river."

As she strode rapidly through the paths in the cotton-woods the girl gradually became conscious of one dominating impulse in her maze of emotions. She must see Jim. She must see him at once. She must see him alone. There were things to be said that needed—that admitted—no witness. She knew that. Arthurs or one of the men would willingly ride to town for her, or with her, but this was a task for her alone. They must know nothing until it was over.

Outwardly calm, but inwardly burning with, impatience, she returned to the house and went through the form of eating supper. Then she dallied through the evening, giving her attention to Allan until all the household, except her mother, had gone to bed.

"I will watch with Allan to-night," her mother said. "You need rest more than I do. Lie down in my room and try to get some sleep."

Her mother kissed her, and Beulah went to her room. But not to sleep. When silence filled all the house she slipped gently down the stairs, through the front yard, and into the corral. Fortunately her horse had been stabled. She harnessed him with some difficulty in the darkness, and threw herself into the saddle. For a hundred yards she walked him; then she drew him off the hard road on to the grass and loosed him into a trot. Half a mile from the house she was swinging at a hard gallop down the dark valley. The soft night wind pressed its caresses on her flushed cheek, but her heart beat fast with excitement and impatience, and she galloped the foaming horse to the limit of his speed. More than once even the sure-footed ranger almost fell over the treacherous badger-holes, but she had learned to ride like the saddle itself, and she merely tightened the rein and urged him faster.

Two hours of such violence were a safety-valve to her emotions, and both horse and rider were content to enter the little town at a walk. Here and there a coal-oil lamp shed its cube of yellow light through an unblinded window, but the streets were deserted and in utter darkness. She had now reached the point at which her general plan to see Travers must be worked out into detail, and she allowed the horse his time as she turned the matter over in her mind. She had no doubt that if she found Sergeant Grey he would permit an interview, but she shrank from making the request. She might do so as a last resort; but if possible she meant to seek out her lover—for so she thought of him—for herself. She knew that the jails in the smaller towns were crude affairs, where the prisoner was locked up and usually left without a guard. The first thing was to find the jail.

At a crossing her horse almost collided with a boy returning home from some late errand. "Oh, Mr. Boy," she said. "Come here, please, I want you to help me."

The boy approached hesitatingly, as though suspicious that some kind of trick were being played on him.

"Can you tell me," she said, in a low voice, "where the jail is? I'll give you a dollar if you do."

"There ain't no jail here, miss," he replied frankly, evidently satisfied that the question was bona fide. "There's a coop, but you wouldn't give a dime to see it. It's just a kind of a shed."

"That's just what I want to find," she continued, "and I'll give you a dollar to show me where it is."

"Easy pickin'," said the boy. "Steer your horse along this way."

He led her through the main part of the town, to where a one-storey building, somewhat apart, stood aloof in the darkness.

"Some coop, ain't it?" said her guide, with boyish irony. "My dad says that's what we git fer votin' against the Gover'ment. The fire truck's in the front end, an' there's a cell with bars behind. Do you want to see that, too?"

"Yes, that's what I want to see, but I can find it myself now, thank you."

"Say, miss, you better be kerful. They've got a murd'rer in there now—Oh, say"—with a sudden change in his voice—"maybe he's somethin' to you? They ain't proved nothin' against him yet."

"Yes, he's a good deal to me," she said.

"Brother?" he demanded, with disconcerting persistence.

"No."

If her eyes could have pierced the darkness she would have seen a broad smile of understanding spreading over his young face. But it was a sympathetic smile withal. "Then I guess this dollar stands for 'beat it'?" he remarked.

"You win," she said, falling into his slang. "Also, forget it."

"I gotchuh, miss," he said, trotting off. Then he called back through the darkness, "An' I hope he gits off."

"God bless him for that," she said to herself, as she dismounted and made her way to the back of the building. She saw the outline of a door, which was undoubtedly locked, and further down the same wall was a little square window, with bars on it. There appeared to be only one cell, so there was no problem of locating the right one.

She stole up along the wall, but the window was too high for her. Searching about the littered yard she found a square tin, such as the ranchers use to carry coal-oil. Mounting this she was able to bring her face to the bars. The window was open for ventilation, and she strained her ear, but at first could hear nothing for the tumultous beating of her own heart. But at length she seemed to catch the sound of regular breathing from within.

"Jim," she said, in a low voice, listening intently. But there was no response.

"Jim," she repeated, a little louder. She fancied she heard a stir, and the sound of breathing seemed to cease.

"Jim Travers!"

"Yes!" came a quick reply. "Yes! Who is it?"

"Come to the window, Jim."

In a moment she saw the outline of his face through the darkness.

"Beulah Harris," he demanded, in his quiet voice, "what are you doing here?"

A great happiness surged about her at the sound of his voice and the warmth of his breath against her face. "I might ask the same, Jim, but such questions are embarrassing. Anyway, I am on the right side of the wall."

She saw his teeth gleam in the darkness. What a wonderful soul he was!

"But you shouldn't have come like this," he protested, and his voice was serious enough. "You are compromising yourself."

"Not I," she answered. "These bars are more inflexible than the stiffest chaperone. And I just had to see you, Jim, at once. We've got to get you out of here."

"How's Allan?"

"Getting better."

"And your father? Pretty angry at me, I guess."

"No, Father isn't angry any more. He's just sorry."

"Times are changing, Beulah. But if he wound that sack around my neck in sorrow, I don't want him at it when he's cross."

She laughed a little, mirthful ripple. Then, with sudden seriousness, "But, Jim, we shouldn't be jesting. We've got to get you out of here."

"I'm not worrying, Beulah," he answered. "They seem to have the drop on me, but I know a few things they don't. Shall I tell you what I know?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because it would seem like arguing—like trying to prove you are innocent. And you don't need to prove anything to me. You understand? You don't need to prove anything to me."

She felt his eyes hot on her face through the darkness. "You don't need to prove anything to me," she repeated.

For a moment he held himself in restraint. The words were simple enough, but he knew what they meant. And this country girl, whom he had learned to like on her father's farm, had grown larger and larger in his scheme of things with the passing weeks. At first he had tried to dissuade himself, to think of it only as a passing fancy, and to remember that he was engaged in the serious business of earning enough money to build a shack on a homestead, and buy a team and a plough, and a cow and some bits of furniture. It would be a plain, simple life, but Beulah was accustomed—What had Beulah to do with it? He scolded himself for permitting her intrusion, and turned his mind to the mellow fields where he would follow the plough until the sun dipped into the Rockies, And then he would turn the horses loose for food and rest, and in the shack the jack-pine knots would be frying in the kitchen stove, and the little table would be set, and Beulah—

And now this girl had come to him, while he was under the shadow, and because the shadow would not let him speak, and because her soul would not be bound by custom, and because her love could not be concealed, she had let him know.

"Have you thought it over, Beulah?" he said. "I have no right, as matters stand, to give or take a promise. I have no right—"

"You have no right to say 'as matters stand' as though matters had anything to do with it. They haven't Jim. No, I have not thought it over. This isn't something you think. It is something that comes to you when you don't think, or in spite of your thinking. But it's real—more real than anything you can touch or handle—more real than these bars, which are not so close as you seem to fancy—"

And then, between the iron rods across the open window, his lips met hers.

..."And you were seeking life, Beulah," he said at last. "Life that you should live in your own way, for the joy of living it. And—"

"And I have found it," she answered, in a voice low and thrilling with tenderness. "I have found it in you. We shall work out our destiny together, but we must keep our thought on the destiny, rather than the work. Oh, Jim, I'm just dying to see your homestead—our homestead. And are there two windows? We must have two windows, Jim—one in the east for the sun, and one in the west for the mountains."

"Our house is all window, as yet," he answered gaily. "And there isn't as much as a fence post to break the view."

"What are you doing here?" said a sharp voice, and Beulah felt as though her tin box were suddenly sinking into a great abyss. She turned with a little gasp. Sergeant Grey stood within arm's length of her.

"Oh, it's Sergeant Grey," she said, with a tone of relief. "I am Beulah Harris. And I've just been getting myself engaged to your prisoner here. Oh, it's not so awful as you think. You see, we knew each other in Manitoba, and we've really been engaged for quite a while, but he didn't know it until to-night."

For a moment the policeman retained his reserve. He remembered the girl, who had already cost him a deflected glance, and he reproached himself that he could doubt her even as he doubted, but how could he know that she had not been passing in firearms or planning a release?

"What she says is right, sergeant," said Travers. "She has just broken the news to me, and I'm the happiest man in Canada, jail or no jail."

There was no mistaking the genuine ring in Travers' voice, and the policeman was convinced. "Most extraordinary," he remarked, at length, "but entirely natural on your part, I must say. I congratulate you, sir." The officer had not forgotten the girl who clung to his arm the morning before. "Hang me, sir," he continued, "there's luck everywhere but in the Mounted Police."

He unlocked the door of the cell. "I ought to search you," he said to Beulah, "but if you'll give me your word that you have no firearms, weapons, knives, or matches, I'll admit you to this—er—drawing-room for a few minutes."

"Nothing worse than a hat-pin," she assured him. "But you must come, too," she added, placing her hand on his arm. "You must understand that."

He accompanied her into the cell, but remained in the doorway, where he suddenly developed an interest in astronomy. At length he turned quickly and faced in to the darkness.

"Speaking, not as an officer, but as a fellow-man, I wish you were damned well—that is, very well—out of this, old chap," he said to Travers.

"Oh, that's all right," Jim assured him. "You couldn't help taking me up, of course, and for all your kindness you would quite cheerfully hang me if it fell to your lot. But it isn't going to."

"I stand ready to be of any service to you that is permissible."

"The inquest is to be to-morrow, isn't it?" asked Beulah. "I think you should be at the inquest, Jim."

"That's right," said the sergeant. "You may throw some new light on the case."

"I've just one request," said Travers. "You know Gardiner?"

"I've heard of him."

"Have him at the inquest."

"As a juror or witness?"

"It doesn't matter, but have him there."

"All right. I'll see to it. And now, Miss Harris, if you will permit me, I will bring your horse for you."

Grey took a conveniently long time to find the horse, but at last he appeared in the door. Beulah released her fingers from Jim's and swung herself into the saddle.

"Sergeant Grey," she said, "I think you're the second best man in the world. Good night."

The sergeant's military shoulders came up squarer still, and he stood at attention as she rode into the darkness.



CHAPTER XX

AN INQUEST—AND SOME EXPLANATIONS

The inquest party consisted of the coroner, who was the doctor that had already attended Allan; Sergeant Grey; six jurors, selected from the townspeople; the manager of the bank, whose suspicions had first been communicated to Grey; Travers; and Gardiner. In the early morning the policeman had ridden out to the ranch for Gardiner, but had met him on his way to town. News of the tragedy had reached him, he said, and he was hurrying in to see if he could be of some assistance to Travers, in arranging for a lawyer, or in any way that might be practicable. Grey told him that as yet no formal charge had been laid against Travers; that he was merely being held pending the finding of the coroner's jury, and suggested that if Gardiner would accompany him to the inquest he might be able, not only to throw some light on Travers' character, but also on his whereabouts on the night of the tragedy. To this Gardiner readily agreed.

It was noon when the party reached the Arthurses' ranch. Beulah counted them out with a field-glass while they were still miles down the valley, and a big table was set in the bunk-house where the cowboys were accommodated during the branding season. It was a matter of course that the men should be fed when they reached Arthurs'. At intervals in the setting of the table the girl returned to her field-glass, until she was quite sure of the straight figure riding beside the mounted policeman.

They swung into the yard amid a cloud of dust, the jingle of trappings, and the hearty exchange of greetings between Arthurs and his acquaintances from town. Gardiner was introduced to Arthurs, and shook hands without removing his gauntlets. He had learned that the party were to have dinner here, and he excused himself, saying that the long ride in the heat had upset him somewhat, and he thought he would be wiser to be in the shade for an hour or two before eating. Arthurs pressed his hospitality upon him, but as Gardiner seemed fixed in his purpose he did not insist. Then the rancher walked over and shook hands with Travers. There were no signs of handcuffs now, and an outsider would not have known that the young man's position differed from that of the others present.

After the meal Gardiner joined them again, and the party, which now included Arthurs and Harris, proceeded up the valley to the scene of the tragedy. It was a great shock to Harris to find that the victim of Allan's gun was his old neighbour, Riles. He stood for a long time as one dazed by the discovery, but gradually out of the confusion a horrible fear took shape in his mind. Allan had shot this man, with whom they had an appointment at this spot; had shot him down, as far as could be shown, without excuse or provocation, before he had so much as entered the door. The body proved to be unarmed, and from its position had evidently fallen into the building after receiving the fatal charge.

The old man turned dry eyes from the gruesome thing across the warm, shimmering valleys. On the farther slopes, leagues distant through the clear air, ripening fields of wheat lay on the hillsides like patches of copper-plate, and farther still thin columns of smoke marked the points where steam-ploughs were wrapping the virgin prairie in her first black bridal of commerce. But he saw none of these. He saw Allan, and he saw bars, and a prisoner's dock. And there was something else that he would not see; he would close his eyes; he would not let its horrid gaunt ligaments thrust themselves into his vision!

After a thorough examination of the scene they laid the body in a democrat and returned to Arthurs', where the coroner held his court in the bunk-house.

Harris's evidence was first received. He found it difficult to give his story connectedly, but item by item he told of his acquaintance with Riles in the eastern province; of their decision to come west and take up more land; of the chance by which they had fallen with Gardiner, and the prospect he had laid before them of more profitable returns from another form of investment; of how his hesitation had finally been overcome by the assurance that all he need do was have his money ready—he was to be under no obligation to go any further in the transaction unless entirely satisfied; of the offer wired by the New York capitalists; of the sale of his farm for a disappointing sum, and their journey with the money to the old shanty up the valley, where they were to be met by Riles and Gardiner, and also, as they expected, by the owner of the mine, with whom they would open direct negotiations, producing the money as proof of their desire and ability to carry out their undertaking; of how they hoped the owner would be induced to accept a deposit and accompany them back to town, where an option would be secured from him for a period sufficient to enable them to turn the property over to the New York investors at a handsome profit; of how he—Harris—wearied by the long ride in the bright, thin air, had gone to sleep confidently with Allan at his side, and of how he had suddenly been awakened by a shot and had heard Allan spring to his feet and rush across the floor of the old building. Then there had been another shot—a revolver shot this time—and everything was darkness, and he could hear only something struggling at the door. Then he told of his own fight; of how they had fallen and rolled about on the rotten floor, and how, in desperation, he had not hesitated to use his teeth on the hand of his assailant, who had finally broken away and disappeared in the darkness. Then he told the rest of his story; of his vigil with Allan, of the loss of the money, of the capture of Travers, and finally of the arrival of the policeman on the scene.

"Didn't it seem to you a foolish thing to go into the hills with all that money to meet a man you had never seen, and buy a property you had never examined?" asked the coroner.

"It wasn't foolishness; it was stark, raving madness, as I see it now," Harris admitted. "But I didn't see it that way then. It looked like a lot of easy money. I didn't care what the coal mine was like—I didn't care whether there was a coal mine at all or not, so long as we made our turn-over to the New York people."

"But did it not occur to you that the whole thing—coal mine and mine owner and New Yorkers and all—was simply a scheme hatched up to induce you away into the fastnesses of the foothills with a lot of money in your possession?"

A half-bewildered look came over Harris, as of a man gripped by a new and paralyzing thought. But he shook his head. "No, it couldn't have been that," he said. "You see, Riles was an old neighbour of mine, and Mr. Gardiner, too, I knew for a good many years. It wasn't like as if I had been dealing with strangers."

"We will go deeper into that matter after a little," said the coroner. "It's very fortunate Mr. Gardiner is here to add what light he can to the mystery. We will now adjourn to the room where the younger Mr. Harris lies and hear his evidence. It would be unwise to move him for some days yet."

They found Allan partly propped up in the white bed. His face was pale, and his hands were astonishingly thin and white, but his mind was clear, and he could talk without difficulty. He covered much the same ground as his father had done, up to the point where the elder Harris had fallen asleep in the old building.

"I can't tell you how it happened, Doctor," he said, turning his eyes, larger now in his pale face, upon the coroner, "but I think I got very homesick—I guess I was pretty tired, too—and I began thinking of things that had happened long ago, back when I was a little child, in a little sod shanty that the old shack in the valley some way seemed to bring to mind. And then I guess I fell asleep, too, but suddenly I sat up in a great fright. I'm not a coward," he said, with a faint smile. "When I'm feeling myself it takes more than a notion or a dark night to send the creeps up the back of my neck. But I own I sat up there so frightened my teeth chattered. I had a feeling that I was going to be attacked—I didn't know by what—maybe by a wild beast—but something was going to rush in through that old blanket hanging in the door and pounce on me."

The sweat was standing on Allan's face, and he sank back weakly into the pillows. Beulah placed a glass to his lips, and the doctor told him to take his time with his story. The jurors stood about the bed in silence, looking from one to the other with expressions that suggested they were almost in the presence of the supernatural. If the black bag with the money had slowly risen out of the floor someone would have quietly set it in a corner until Allan was ready to continue his evidence.

"As the minutes went by," Allan continued, after an interval, "that terrible dread grew upon me, and my sense of danger changed from fear to certainty. Something was going to attack me through that door! I raised my gun and took careful aim. I saw the blanket swing a little; then I saw the fingers of a man's hand. Then I fired.

"Perhaps I am a murderer," he continued, simply, "but before God I know no more why I fired that shot than you do."

There were deep breathing and shuffling of feet as Allan completed this part of his statement, but only the coroner found his voice. "Most remarkable evidence," he ejaculated. "Most extraordinary evidence. I have never heard anything so obviously sincere and at the same time so altogether unexplainable."

"Perhaps it's not so unexplainable," said a quiet voice; and Mary Harris made her way through the circle of men to the side of the bed. She sat down on the coverlet and took the boy's hand in hers. It mattered not how many were looking on; he was her little boy again.

"You will understand, Doctor, and some of you men are parents," she began. "Allan will be twenty-five years old this coming winter. A little less than twenty-five years ago my husband was obliged to leave me alone for a considerable period in our little sod shanty on the homestead where we had located down in Manitoba. There were no near neighbours, as we count distance in well-settled districts, and I was altogether alone, I stood it all right for the first day or two, but my nerves were not what they should have been, and gradually a strange, unreasoning fear came upon me. I suppose it was the immensity of the prairies, the terrible loneliness of it all, and my own state of health, but the dread grew from day to day and from night to night. I tried to busy self, to keep my mind active, to throw off the spectre that haunted me, but day and night I was oppressed with a sense of impending danger. We had no wooden door on the house; we hadn't money to buy the boards to make one, and all my protection was a blanket hung in the doorway. I used to watch that blanket at night; I would light the lantern and sit in the corner and watch that blanket. My fear gradually pictured to itself an attack through that doorway—I didn't know by what; by white man, or Indian, or wild beast, or ghost, or worse, if that is possible; my mind could not balance things; nothing seemed too unreasonable or terrible to expect. So I took the gun, and sat in the corner, and waited.

"And then at last it came. I didn't see anything, and I didn't hear anything, but I knew it was there. I still remember how frightened and yet how cool I was in that last moment. I held the gun to my shoulder and waited for It to thrust itself against the blanket. In another moment I am sure I should have fired. But before that moment I heard my name called, and I knew my husband's voice, and I came out of the nightmare."

She brought her eyes slowly from the face of the doctor over the group of men assembled in the room, and then dropped them to meet Allan's. He was breathing her name softly. "If it was a wrong thing for Allan to shoot this man," she said, "don't blame Allan for it. Let me pay any price that must be paid."

"Most extraordinary," the coroner repeated, after a silence. "It seems to account for the shooting of Riles, but it leaves us as much as ever—more than ever, I should say—in the dark concerning the disappearance of the money, and the part which has implicated the young man Travers in the affair."

The banker gave his evidence. It was not unusual, he said, for considerable sums in bank-notes to be handled among speculators and land buyers, but the amount withdrawn by Harris was so great that it had left him somewhat ill at ease, and as Sergeant Grey had happened his way he had mentioned the matter to him.

The policeman shed little new light on the case. He had followed the party into the hills as best he could, taking the off chance of something sinister afoot. He had found Harris, with his wounded son, and a prisoner, and a man dead in the doorway. He had notified the coroner and taken Travers in charge. Here his eyes met Beulah's. "I don't think there is anything more to be said," he concluded.

During the hearing of the various witnesses Gardiner had attempted an air of impersonal interest, but with no great success. His demeanour, studied though it was, betrayed a certain anxiety and impatience. He was dressed just as he had dismounted from his horse, having removed only his hat. But he smiled confidently when asked for his evidence, and told his story calmly and connectedly.

It is quite true that he was associated with Riles and Mr. Harris in the coal-mine investment. He was acting for the owner of the property; but had seen that a large profit was to be made from the turn-over, and had been glad to place the opportunity in the way of two old friends. The offer from the New York concern was entirely bona fide; he had the telegram in his pocket at that moment, notwithstanding the suggestion made by the coroner, which, if he might say so, he thought was hardly warranted, and would not have been made with a full knowledge of the circumstances. The owner of the mine could be produced at the proper moment, if that became necessary.

"I feel a grave responsibility in this whole matter," Gardiner protested, with some emotion. "I feel that I am, at least indirectly, responsible for the serious loss that has befallen Mr. Harris, and for the injury to his son. But when you have heard the whole circumstances you will agree that the situation was one I could not possibly have foreseen. Let me give them to you in some detail.

"The day before yesterday, in company with Riles, I met Mr. Harris and his son, and found that their money had arrived. The remittance was not as large as they expected, but I believed that I could raise some money privately, and that we would still be able to put the deal through. I advised against losing any time, as I knew that if the owner should meet anyone else interested in a proposition of a similar nature we would find it much harder to make a bargain with him. It was arranged that the two Mr. Harrises were to drive ahead, taking the money with them, and that Riles and I would follow. We were to overtake them at the old building where this unfortunate tragedy occurred. As it happened, I had a sick horse at the ranch, and, as I was delayed in getting some medicine for him, Riles suggested that he would ride out to the ranch—that is, where I live—and wait for me there. Up to that time I had no suspicions, and I agreed to that.

"Well, when I reached the ranch, I could find nothing of Riles, and, on further search, I could find nothing of Travers, who was working for me. Their riding horses were gone, and so were their saddles and bridles. I found that Travers had taken his revolver out of the house. I confess my suspicions were then somewhat aroused, but I found myself with the sick horse on my hands, and I could not very well leave the place. Of course, I never thought of anything so bad as has happened, or I would not have considered the horse, but I admit I was at a loss to understand their conduct. But when I heard, early this morning, what had happened, it was all clear to me."

During the latter part of this evidence Travers had fixed his eyes on Gardiner, but the witness had steadily avoided him. Jim was now convinced that he was the victim, not of a coincidence, but a plot. Of course, he could give his evidence, which would be directly contradictory to that of Gardiner, but he was already under suspicion, and anything he might say would be unconsciously discounted by the jurors. But he began calmly, a quiet smile still playing about his thin lips and clean teeth. "I am sorry I cannot corroborate all the last witness has said," he commenced. "I did not leave the ranch with Riles; on the contrary, I was fishing down by the river when I saw Riles and Gardiner ride by. Gardiner was talking, and I heard him mention Mr. Harris's name. I worked for Mr. Harris not long ago, but I did not know he was in this part of the country. I heard Gardiner say—" Jim coloured a little, and stopped.

"Well, what did you hear him say?" said the coroner. "That is what we are anxious to know."

"I heard him say something about Mr. Harris losing all his money that night, in the old shanty up the river road. 'Strange things have happened up there, Riles,' he said. That made me suspicious, and I hurried back to the ranch, determined to follow them. I found that my revolver had been taken. I armed myself as best I could, and set out. When I came near the building which Gardiner had mentioned I dismounted and approached it carefully. It was very dark. Suddenly I was attacked from behind. A sack was thrown over my head, and I was overpowered, and bound. I don't know how long I was kept in that condition, but when at last the sack was removed I was in the presence of Sergeant Grey."

With the progress of Travers' narrative all eyes had turned to Gardiner, but, whatever his inward emotions, he outwardly showed no signs of discomfiture. "This seems to be a day of strange tales," he said to the coroner, "and the last we have heard is stranger than the first. Of course, it is quite absurd on the face of it. The suggestion that I would be a party to robbing Mr. Harris of twenty thousand dollars, and so balk a transaction in which I stood to make a profit of more than twice that amount, is too ridiculous for discussion. I didn't say so before, because it didn't seem to bear on the case, but I have at home a telegram which I received a few days ago from the New York investors, offering me a personal commission of twenty per cent, on the transaction if I was able to get this property for them at the price they had offered. So, from a purely selfish point of view, you see where my interests lay. But there are other reasons for this fine tale which you have just heard. To spare the feelings of some present, I intended to say nothing of them, but if I must tell what I know, why, I must tell what I know. This man Travers was a farm hand working for Harris on his farm back in Manitoba. Harris is—or was—well-to-do, and Travers accordingly mustered up an attachment for his daughter. This the young lady, it seems, was foolish enough to return. They—"

"That'll do, Gardiner," interrupted Travers, in a quiet, vibrant voice. "You are getting away from the subject."

"On the contrary, I'm getting close to the subject—a little too close for your comfort, it seems."

"I am not investigating any family closets," said the coroner. "You will have to show the connection between these matters and the inquiry we are making."

"I will do that in a moment, sir," Gardiner returned. "But I cannot show the connection until I have shown the events that are connected. Travers had trouble with Harris and had a fight with Allan. Then he and the young lady ran away. They have both been in this part of the country for some time. But Travers' plan to inherit the Harris property was upset on account of the girl quarrelling with her parents, and his ardour seems to have cooled off noticeably. But he was as keen for the property as ever. Riles was a weakling in the hands of a man like Travers, and no doubt he betrayed the fact that Harris was taking his money with him into the hills. Then the two of them framed up the plan which has resulted in the death of one and the arrest of the other." During these exchanges the sympathies of the jurors seemed to veer from side to side. The theories propounded were so contradictory that opinions wavered with each sentence of evidence. But a new bolt was ready for the shooting.

"Mr. Coroner," said Beulah, rising and pointing at Gardiner, "will you make that man take his gauntlets off?"

There seemed an instant recession of the blood from Gardiner's face. But it was for the instant only. "My hat is off," he said, with a smile. "Is not that sufficient?"

"Make him take them off!" Beulah insisted.

"There is no rule against wearing gauntlets in a coroner's court," said the coroner. "I do not see the point of your objection."

"Make him take them off," said Beulah.

"As the young lady insists," said the coroner, turning to Gardiner, "I suggest that you comply with her request."

"I should be glad to," said Gardiner, "but the fact is I have a sore hand. When I was giving the horse medicine the night Travers left me alone the brute nipped me a little, and I have been keeping it covered up since."

"Make him take them off," said Beulah.

"Why should you be so insistent?" said the coroner. "Surely it makes no difference—"

"Only this difference. You have heard my father's evidence of the fight in the old house. The man with whom he fought will have tooth-marks in his hand. Make him take them off. Or if you won't—look at these hands." She seized Jim's hands in hers and held them up before the coroner and the jury. "Any tooth-marks there? Now make this other man show his."

For a moment all eyes were on Travers' hands. In that moment Gardiner rushed for the open window, and in another instant would have been through it, had not the quick arm of the policeman intercepted.

"Not so fast, my man," said Grey. "Now we will see this horse-bite of yours." Gardiner made no further resistance, and he drew the glove from his hand. There was a fresh scar on the right thumb.

The coroner examined it carefully. When he spoke it was in the voice of a judge delivering sentence. "That is not a horse-bite," he said. "Those are the marks of human teeth!"

Gardiner smiled a faint smile. "Well, what are you going to do about it?" he said.

"We are going to put you in Travers' place and tender him our apologies," said the coroner.

"Very good," said Gardiner. "And do I marry the girl?"

"This is no time for levity," said the coroner, sternly. "You have escaped a murder charge only by grace of this young man's excellent constitution."

But Travers had crowded into the centre of the circle. "Gardiner," he said, "if you weren't under arrest I'd thrash you here and now. But you can at least do something to square yourself. Where is that money?"

"That's right, Jim. Everyone thinks of what is nearest his heart."

"You scoundrel! You know why it is near my heart. You have robbed Mr. Harris of all that he had spent his whole life for. You will have no chance to use that money yourself. You are sure of your living for the next twenty years. Why not show that you are not all bad—that you have some human sentiments in you? It seems as little as you can do."

"There may be something in what you say," said Gardiner. "I have a slip of paper here with the key to the secret."

He reached with his finger and thumb in his vest pocket and drew out a small folded paper.

This he unfolded very slowly and deliberately before the eyes of the onlookers. It contained a small quantity of white powder. Before any hand could reach him he had thrown his head back and swallowed it.

"Too late!" he cried, as Grey snatched the empty paper from his fingers. "Too late! Well, I guess I beat you all out, eh? And, as I said before, what are you going to do about it? Twenty years, eh, Jim? You'll be scrawny and rheumatic by that time, and the beautiful Beulah will be fat and figureless. Twenty years for you, Jim, but twenty minutes for me—and I wouldn't trade with you, damn you! I beg the pardon of the ladies present. One should never forget to be a gentleman, even when—when—"

But Gardiner's breath was beginning to come fast, and he raised his hands to his throat. A choking spell seized him, and he would have fallen had not the policeman and the coroner held him on his feet. "Let me lie down," he said, when he got his breath. "Let me lie down, can't you? Have I got to die on end, like a murderer?"

They led him to the adjoining room, where he fell upon the bed. The muscles of his great arms and neck were working in contortions, and his tongue seemed to fill his mouth.

"Most extraordinary," said the coroner. "Strychnine, doubtless. We can't do much for him, I'm afraid. We might try some mustard and hot water, Mrs. Arthurs."

"Take your time, Lil," whispered Arthurs. "You may save your country a long board bill." But Lilian Arthurs' abhorrence of Gardiner's perfidy had been overwhelmed in a wave of sympathy for a suffering fellow-being. She hurried to the kitchen, while the men of the party filed down the stairs and out into the yard. John Harris was the last to leave the house, and he walked slowly, with bare, bowed head, into the group who were excitedly discussing the amazing turn events had taken. He took no part in their conversation, but stood a little apart, plunged deep in his own inward struggle.

At last he turned and called his wife in the kitchen door. "Bring Beulah," he said.

The two women joined him. At first Harris stood with face averted, but in a moment he spoke in a clear, quiet voice.

"I haven't played the game fair with you two," he said, "and I want to say so now. Perhaps it would be truer to say that I played the wrong game. Twenty-five years have proved it was the wrong game. Now, without a penny, I can start just where I started twenty-five years ago. The only difference is that I am an old man instead of a young one. I'm going to take another homestead and start again, at the right game, if Mary will start with me."

She put her hand in his, and her eyes were bright again with the fire of youth. "You know there is only one answer, John," she whispered.

Harris called Travers over from the group of men.

"There's one thing more," he continued. "When I started I had only a wife to keep, and I don't intend to take any bigger responsibility now. Allan will be having a homestead of his own. Jim Travers, I am speaking to you! I owe you an apology for some things and an explanation for some things, but I'm going to square the debt with the only gift I have left."

The light breeze tossed the hair of Beulah's uncovered head, and the light of love and health glowed in her face and thrilled through the fine symmetry of her figure.

"Take her, Jim," he said.

"She is a godly gift," said the young man reverently.

"You think so now," said her father. "You know nothing about it. In twenty-five years you will know just how great a gift she is—or she will not be worthy of her mother."

Harris and his wife were gazing with unseeing eyes into the mountains when Arthurs handed them a letter. "It came in the mail which the boys brought out this morning," he said, "and I forgot all about it until this minute."

It was from Bradshaw. Harris opened it indifferently, but the first few lines aroused his interest, and he read it eagerly to the end.

"My dear Harris," it ran, "on receipt of your telegram I immediately opened negotiations through my connections looking to a sale of your farm with its crop and equipment, complete as a going concern. I succeeded in getting an offer of the $40,000 you set on it, and had all the papers drawn up, when I discovered that among us we had made a serious omission. You will remember that, a good many years ago, when you were taking on some fresh obligations, you transferred the homestead into your wife's name. I assured the purchaser that there would be no difficulty about getting title from your wife, but as all the buildings are on the homestead quarter he would agree to nothing better than paying $20,000 for the rest of your land, leaving the homestead quarter, with the buildings, stock, and implements, out of the transaction. As his price seemed a fair one for the balance of the property, and as I assumed your need of the money was urgent, I closed a deal on that basis, cashed the agreement, and remitted the proceeds to you at once by wire. I trust my actions in the matter meet with your approval,

"Yours sincerely,

"GEORGE BRADSHAW."

Harris placed the letter in the hands of his wife. She tried to read it, but a great happiness enveloped her as a flood and the typewritten characters seemed to swim before her. "What does it mean, John?" she asked, noting his restrained excitement. "What does it mean?"

"It means that the homestead quarter was not sold—after all—that it is still yours, with the buildings, and machinery, and stock, and this year's crop just ready for cutting."

She raised her eyes to his. "Still ours, John, you mean. Still ours."

In the rapid succession of events everyone seemed to have forgotten, or disregarded, Gardiner. But at this moment the doctor came rushing out of the house.

"Gardiner's gone!" he exclaimed, as he came up to the men.

Some of the party removed their hats.

"Oh, not that way—not that way!" exclaimed the doctor. "I mean he's gone—skipped—beat it, if you understand. Most extraordinary! I was taking his pulse. It was about normal, and he seemed resting easier, so I slipped downstairs for the antidote. When I went back—I was only gone a moment—there wasn't sight or sound of him."

The men stared at each other for a moment; then followed the doctor in a race for Gardiner's room. They found it as he said. There was neither sight nor sound of Gardiner.

Sergeant Grey conducted a swift examination, not of Gardiner's room, but of the one in which Allan was lying. He was rewarded by finding the little slip of paper, with a few crystals of powder still clinging to it. The coroner examined the crystals through his magnifying-glass; then, somewhat dubiously, raised them on a moistened finger to his tongue, and after a moment's hesitation swallowed in an impressive, scholarly fashion.

"Saccharum album!" he exclaimed. "Common white sugar! Most extraordinary!"

But Sergeant Grey was at the open window. It was only an eight-foot drop to the soft earth, and to the policeman there was no longer any mystery in Gardiner's disappearance. The mock suicide was a carefully-planned ruse to be employed by Gardiner if the worst came to the worst.

At that moment the sound of horse's hoofs was heard on the gravelly road, and three hundred yards away Gardiner dashed through a gap in the trees that skirted the base of the hills. He was on the policeman's horse, and riding like wild fire.

"I want all of you men, and a horse for each," said Grey, quickly, turning upon them like a general marshalling his officers. "There are a dozen different trails he may fellow, and we must put a man on each. I will give immediate pursuit, in the hope of riding him down before he can throw us off the scent, and I will leave it to you, Mr. Arthurs, to organize the posse and scour the whole country until he is located."

At Grey's first words two men had rushed to the corral, and were already saddling horses. The first and fastest was placed at the command of the policeman, and in a minute he, too, was riding break-neck into the hills. But the delay was enough to give Gardiner almost a mile's lead, and the Government horse was a match for any on the ranch.

Grey knew that the main road, if followed far enough, dwindled into a pack trail, which in turn seemed to lose itself in the fastnesses of the mountains, but in reality opened into a pass leading through the range. He gave Gardiner credit for knowing as much, and concluded that the fugitive would make a bolt straight through the mountains. There was no time to watch for tracks; his chance to ride his man down depended entirely upon speed. If he miscalculated, and Gardiner, instead of making for the pass, sought refuge in the mountains, the posse would certainly locate him or starve him into surrender. So the officer urged his horse to the limit and galloped straight into the mountain battlements ahead of him.

An hour's hard riding brought him into a tremendously rough country, where the trail at times was nothing more than a narrow defile or ledge, and sheer walls of rock rose thousands of feet above, their giant edges cutting the blue sky like the teeth of a mighty saw. Far below, a ribbon of green and white, the river rolled in its canyon. Here and there a thin stream of water sprayed down the mountain side, cutting a damp, treacherous belt across the trail. But at one such spot Grey's heart leaped within him, for there, unmistakably clear in the thin soil and soft rock, were the marks of a horse's shoe, not an hour old. A few minutes later he saw Gardiner swinging round a spur of rock half a mile further up the pass.

The policeman began to watch the moist spots for the tell-tale hoof-prints, and invariably their evidence revealed itself. He knew now that he had guessed Gardiner's course correctly, and it was a matter of minutes until he should ride him down. He wondered whether the man was armed or not; it would be an easy trick to hide behind a rock and pick the policeman off as he rode by.

Suddenly, at a turn in the path, his eye caught a sight which made him throw his horse back on his tracks. A sheer precipice fell away a thousand feet below him, and beetling cliffs cut off the sky above. Across the path trickled a little stream. And there in the stream, so clear they could not be misread, were the marks cut by a horse's feet sliding over the precipice.

The policeman dismounted carefully. There was scarcely room for him to pass his horse on the narrow ledge. Where the stream had worn it it sloped downwards at an uncomfortable angle. He knelt beside it and traced the marks of the shoe-calks with his finger. They led over the edge. Eighteen inches down the mountain side was a fresh scar where steel had struck a projecting corner of rock.

A thousand feet below the green water slid and swirled in the bed of the canyon.

THE END.