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ARTWELL was spattered with mud from foot to eyebrow. Some of it had dried and fallen off, some had set only the firmer for being dry, leaving him speckled and mottled as by some peculiar disease that infected not only the man, but his raiment as well. His beard was just long enough to hold the gobs of mud flung into his face from the hoofs of the cattle as he made that wild ride among them, and if appearances were to be taken at face value, Texas Hartwell was a desperate man indeed as he rode down to Malcolm Duncan's gate.

He did not see Winch among the men assembled to receive him. Duncan stood to the fore, the sun in his iron-gray hair, his sleeves turned up from his long, muscular arms, just as he had put down his knife and fork. Texas flung himself from the saddle at the corral gate and began to undo his cinch. Duncan came over to him, the others stopping off a little way, plainly in accord with some prearranged plan.

"Well, you stampeded 'em," said Duncan, an air

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 I repeat, if they attack the upper part of the balloon you will not be able to see them, they will tear the silk which keeps us up, and we are 3,000 feet above the ground!"

At this moment one of the fiercest of the birds swooped right down upon the "Victoria," with beak and claws extended, ready to bite and rend.

"Fire!" roared the doctor.

Scarcely had the word passed his lips, when the bird, shot dead, went tumbling into space.

Kennedy seized one of the double-abrrelled guns; Joe shouldered the other.

Frightened by the report, the falcons drew back for an instant, but they returned to the charge almost immediately with increased fury. Kennedy, with one bullet cut the head clean off the nearest bird; Joe broke the wing of another.

"Only eleven more," said he.

But now the birds changed their tactics and simultaneously rose above the "Victoria." Kennedy looked at Ferguson.

The latter, notwithstanding his energy and fortitude, turned pale. There was a moment of terrified silence. Then a rending noise was heard, as when silk is torn, and the car sank beneath the feet of the three travelers.

"We are lost!" cried Ferguson, as he gazed at the barometer, which was rapidly rising. Then he added: "Throw out the ballast; out with it!"

In a few seconds all the quartz had disappeared. "We are falling still. Empty the water-tanks, do you hear. We are falling into the lake!"

Joe obeyed. The doctor looked down. The lake appeared to be coming up to meet him, objects became more distinct, the car was not 200 feet from the surface of Lake Tchad.

"The provisions!" cried the doctor, and the case which contained them was hurled into space.

The descent became less rapid, but the unhappy travelers still were falling.

"Throw out more!" cried the doctor for the last time.

"There is nothing left," replied Kennedy.

"Yes," said Joe, laconically; and, with a rapid farewell gesture, he threw himself from the balloon.

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 of constraint about him, as of a man uncertain of his way.

"It looks that way, sir," Texas replied, still busy with his girths.

Duncan stood silent, watching him as closely as if unsaddling a horse was some rare feat, and Hartwell, an expert, come to demonstrate it. Hartwell stripped off the saddle and threw it on the fence.

"You'd better have spread a sack of poison over the grass," Duncan said. "Well, you stood by your friends, you got their cattle into this country, anyhow. We've got to give you credit for that, Hartwell—if that's your name."

Texas unbridled the horse, patted its neck affectionately, turned it into the corral, where it threw itself down in the mud and rolled, grunting its satisfaction over its relaxation after its hard night.

"Gentlemen, Hartwell is my name," said he, "and it's a name that's never been disgraced by any man that answered to it. I went out last night to do the job you laid out for me, not hopin' to be able to put it through, but aimin' to do my best."

The humor that he had seen in the muddle of the stampede had all gone out of the situation now. These men were earnest in their belief that he was one of the southern drovers' gang, and it was going to be something far from a laughing matter to change their belief.

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 "I guess you did your best—and your worst," Duncan retorted.

"I don't know what argument I can make, sirs, to convince you that I'm square with you, and always have been since the minute I went to work. I don't aim to excuse myself for lettin' them rope me down, yonder, and I'm not goin' to try. I don't know a man in that outfit by sight, and only one of them by his voice. I'm goin' to look for that man and bring him before you. Maybe you'll take his word for it where you hate to take mine."

"There wouldn't be any proof in a thief speaking for a thief, Hartwell."

Hartwell's face gorged with blood at the word "thief" as if apoplexy had taken him. He drew himself up in all the austerity of his lean frame and severe face and looked Duncan in the eye with a directness that made the big cow-man draw back a step.

"I'd go kind of easy on that word, sir," Hartwell warned him.

"Yes, I guess I shouldn't say that," Duncan reflected, with the bearing of a man who wanted to be fair. "It's a man's business to stand by his friends, and I can't blame you for that. But I do blame you, Hartwell, for taking a spy's advantage of us, crawlin' in the way you did and takin' that job of trail-rider."

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 "It came to me before I even started to find it, sir."

"Well, there's no use to stand here and chaw words over it, Hartwell. It's done, them Texas cattle are in here, and it may take two or three weeks to round up our herds and pick them out. Maybe they're clean cattle, maybe they're not—time alone can show that. But crooked or square, you're a bold man, Hartwell, to ride back here and face a bunch of men that believe you've done them damage beyond calculation."

Texas turned from him in his high dignity, out of patience with a man of Duncan's breadth for being so blind. Even when Hartwell's strongest plea of innocence was on his tongue he was too narrow to understand it. A guilty man would not have come back; he would have been under no such necessity.

"There's your horse, and here's your saddle, Mr. Duncan, sir. I've got three weeks' pay comin' to me, if you can see it that way, sir."

"Well, I don't see it that way!"

Duncan spoke harshly, bristling with indignation. Hartwell heard others remarking on the wonder of his gall, and what ought to be handed out to him as pay.

"I reckon I can live without it, sir," said Texas, loftily.

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 "You're a lucky man that we're allowin' you to get out of here with your life. They say you walked into this country; well, walk out of it, and walk fast!"

"Hold on, Duncan! I've got a spoon to put into this pot."

The speaker came forward, rolling in his gait like a bear. He was a man as big as Duncan, but with none of his handsomeness, little of his intelligence. His shirt-collar was open on his bristling neck, his hat was on his eyebrows, and he was a red, raw-mouthed savage out of whom curses came pouring like foul water from a drain. He drew up before Hartwell, where he stood with his legs straddled, looking at him with malevolent contempt.

"You say you're on the square with us, and you think we're fools enough to swaller it, don't you?"

"I don't expect anything reasonable or just from you at all, sir!"

"Yes, and if you was on the square them Texas fellers'd 'a' shot you so full of holes your hide wouldn't 'a' made shoe-strings! Yes, an' Winch and these fellers knew it when they sent you over there on that fool errant. I wasn't there, I didn't have no hand in it, and I'd 'a' stood out ag'in' it till hell froze over if I'd 'a' been!"

"Sir, I think I'll be on my way," said Texas,

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 speaking to Duncan, ignoring the blustering cattleman entirely.

"Not till I git through with you, young feller, you won't! An' maybe you won't then."

"Let him go, Sawyer; we haven't got proof enough against him to hold him," Duncan said.

"I got proof enough to satisfy me, Duncan. More than any man in this valley I stand to lose by them fever ticks you and your damn gang's sowed over my ranch, young feller. Them cattle's over there mixed up with mine, and they'll all have the fever before ten days, and I'll be cleaned out. Do you reckon I'm goin' to stand by and see the varmint that done it sneak off to his hole and me not move a hand?"

"Oh, well, Sawyer, if it'll do you any good."

Duncan indulged him, like a headstrong child. The others drew round in a half circle, knowing fully what was coming.

"You stampeded 'em in here, you and them other Texas fellers combined—it wasn't no oneman job, and I ain't fool enough to believe it was. I didn't ketch you doin' it, and I ain't got no call, 'cordin' to law, to pull out and shoot you in your tracks, but if you'll take off that there gun and stand up to me I'll give you the damndest thumpin' a man ever packed!"

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 Texas had noticed from the beginning of Sawyer's arraignment that he was not armed. It came to him at once that this badgering was an attempt to separate him from his own gun and throw him into their hands defenseless. He stood considering it, Sawyer mistaking his silence for a shortage on courage. He renewed his insults and defiance.

"You got a name over in Cottonwood for bein' a fightin' man, ain't you? Yes, and you're a one hell of a fightin' man, ain't you? Maybe you can handle a bunch of them dudes up there, but when it comes to men with hair on their backs you're a baby. Yes, an' if I done right by you I'd take a feather piller and bat your brains out and give 'em to the cat!"

Sawyer's friends laughed. The great savage waddled a little nearer Texas, shoving his mean face forward.

"I never seen a man from Texas in my life that I couldn't run out of the country with a ellum switch. They ain't got no fight in 'em lessen they's a bunch of them together. Them's the kind of fellers that lets the dog lick the clabber off of their faces and calls it a shave—they ain't got the stren'th in 'em to raise hair on their faces like a man. Yes, and if you don't take off that dam' gun

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 I'll pick you up with it on you and hold you out till you wiggle yourself to death, you dam' leather-bellied horny rattler!"

Texas unbelted his gun and handed it to Duncan. Then he stepped forward before anybody guessed his next move, and slapped Sawyer in the leering, red, hairy face.

Hartwell's hand was big and hard, and there was vigor in the blow, for he gave it for the honor of Texas and her men, and the traditions of their noble sacrifices and splendid courage. It made the cow-man's teeth pop, and sent him winding up against the wall of his comrades.

Sawyer came at Hartwell with his head down, like a bull, his arms reaching to grapple. There was no science on either side of that combat, but there was a great deal of main strength and awkwardness, and a grunting and snorting from Sawyer like a grizzly bear. Hartwell avoided his first rush and struck him in the face, drawing blood.

Texas was unloading from his mind and conscience all the hard things which had grown up in him during those days of suspicion and accusation. He was fighting not only Sawyer, but the Cattle Raisers' Association, and every blow that he struck was for his honor and the lightening of his heart. It was better to die fighting than to live disgraced.

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 That thought was uppermost in the whirl of his blinding emotions of vindication and vengeance, hot anger and desperation.

He was overmatched by fifty pounds, and Sawyer was fighting with the tools which he knew best how to use. The one advantage that Hartwell had was his shiftiness of foot, which kept him out of Sawyer's rib-crushing arms. Up and down the ring of men they surged and slashed, blows falling on both sides, blood streaming from faces, from gashed knuckles, the rim of onlookers widening and contracting to accommodate the fury of the clash.

As the combat lengthened and the punishment that each received increased, their fury grew. Caution was no longer a part of either man's policy. They met hand to hand, bent, panted, gasped, dripping blood. Hartwell had got a blow that nearly closed his right eye. His face was cut, his nose and lips were swollen, his mouth was full of blood.

He did not know what damage Sawyer had suffered, but it seemed that his fists fell on the cowman's hard body with little effect. Sawyer cursed him and insulted him with every vile name that was a challenge on the range, and surged at him in his roaring charges, at last planting a blow that sent Hartwell spinning and stretched him on his back. The cowman would have followed up this

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 advantage by throwing himself upon his fallen opponent's body and beating him unconscious as he stretched, for that was all included in the grappleand-bite tactics of range encounters. But Duncan stretched out his arms and held him back.

"Have you got enough of it?" Duncan asked, as Texas immediately scrambled to his feet.

Hartwell's head was whirling, there was a sickness in the pit of his stomach, such a sickness that it seemed to reach every nerve of his body and make him weak. He shook himself like a dog coming out of the water, and bent his will to overcome this sickness which was making his senses dim.

"No," he said.

Duncan stepped from between them. Sawyer, reserving his filthiest and most slanderous epithet for the last, hurled it at Texas like a handful of effluvium. If anything had been needed in excess of his unbroken will to brace Texas, this name would have served. Instead of waiting for Sawyer to charge, Texas sprang and grappled him.

A new strength was in him, a fresh clearness had come over his senses which was as steadying as a cool hand on his head. As he had seized the horse on the fair grounds at Cottonwood he laid hold of Sawyer, unfeeling of his blows and kicks. The cowman's neck cracked as Hartwell closed with

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 him, bent him backward, lifted him, flung him a clean back somersault and left him sprawled senseless, his face to the ground.

A gasp of astonishment, not unblended with admiration, greeted this feat of strength. The onlookers stood back from Sawyer as men avoid a dead body, no man offering a hand to lift him.

Hartwell had lost his hat. He looked around for it, his head swimming, his forehead throbbing as if he had been hammered with a maul. One eye was so swollen that he could see through only a slit, the other misty from blood that ran into it from some injury in his bruised forehead.

Somebody came forward with the hat and gave it to him, silently. Duncan held out the belt with the big dangling gun. Hartwell girded himself with it again, put on his hat, although it seemed to stand ridiculously small on top of the great enlargement that he imagined his head had undergone, faced about, and walked away. He said no word to anybody; not one of them said a word to him. His way led him past the spot where Sawyer had fallen, his face in the mud of the trampled road.

Hartwell's after-recollection of the short walk from the battle-ground to the creek was as if he had risen in delirium from a bed of pain and gone wandering. It seemed a long distance to him, and that terrible deep sickness was over him again, as if

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 from an internal hemorrhage that gorged his vitals with blood.

Instinctively he must have concealed himself in the thick willows, for he had no recollection of it afterward. But on waking when the day was almost spent he found himself there, bruised, cut, bloody, and weak. His first thought was that his nickname had been the cause of all this misadventure and misery. If he had come into the Kansas range as Jim Hartwell, things never would have clouded up so suspiciously in men's minds. The pride that he had in that name "Texas" was like all vanities, he reflected; a thing to bring its possessor soon or late to humiliation and pain. Better to have been common Jim, with a whole hide and a good report, than picturesque Texas, beaten refugee, outcast of his kind, distrusted of men.

With these bitter reflections he turned his face toward Cottonwood, twenty miles away. And it was hard walking on Uncle Boley Drumgoole's high heels, a sore road and a long, weary one. It was almost noon of the next day when he arrived at the Woodbine Hotel, a grim, bruised figure, weak and sick.

A man was sitting on the bench beside the door, a cowboy in goatskin chaparejos with the long white hair on them. He rose and blocked the door with a long arm, an envelope in his hand.

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 "Duncan sent you this," he said.

Texas was ashamed of his battered face and bloody garments. He turned his back to the cowboy as he opened the letter. It contained seventy dollars in bills, but no word of writing, nothing at all but the money. Seventy dollars was the sum due him for his little more than three weeks' work at eighty dollars a month. Duncan had figured it liberally, and Texas knew that the big cattleman had relented a bit toward him, even to the extent of again allowing him the benefit of the doubt. There was a little cheer in this reflection. But very little.

"And Dee Winch sent you this," said the cowboy, reaching out his long arm again.

In the palm of his hand lay a loaded cartridge of large caliber. Texas looked from it to the messenger's face for further information.

"Winch told me to say to you if you ain't gone out of this country by the time they finish roundin' up them Texas cattle, he'll make you swaller six of these the first time he sets eyes on you."

Texas took the cartridge, turned it a moment in his fingers, his head bent in his peculiar pose of deep concentration. Then he flipped it into the street as he had flipped the worthless match.

"Tell him I'll be right here."

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 Hartwell's tone was gently courteous, as if he accepted some pleasant engagement. The cowboy heard him in wonder, and looked after him with strange respect as he entered the office of the green hotel.

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LLIE NOGGLE was clever at reducing swellings and easing the pain of abrasions, from his long practice at that subsidiary art in a land where violence was the rule. After he had gone over Texas Hartwell's face with his razor, and his lumps and bumps, cuts and bruises with his lotions and sweet-scented powders, there was little trace of damage to be seen.

That was one advantage of having a bony face, he remarked, ingenuously, as he worked on the hurts. A man like Hartwell could stand up to a lot of pounding and skinning, and get out of Noggle's chair just about the same as ever. But every barber couldn't do that for a man, hard face or soft face, he allowed. No, sir, it took an artist to make a job of it that a man could go to church with and not feel ashamed.

Hartwell owned that it took an artist, indeed, and that Mr. Noggle was the premier of his craft. He left the shop with confidence, and walked the street without shame. He had not ventured to place himself in Mr. Noggle's hands until after dark, for his

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 "Joe, Joe!" cried the terrified doctor.

But Joe could no longer hear him. The "Victoria," lightened now, resumed her ascent, and reached a height of 1,000 feet; and the wind whistling through the torn silk covering of the balloon, carried them towards the northern side of the lake.

"He is lost!" cried Kennedy. despairingly.

"Lost to save us!" replied Ferguson.

And these brave men felt big tears rolling down their cheeks. They leaned over the side of the car, in the vain hope to distinguish some trace of the unfortunate Joe; but they were too far away.

"What is to be done now?" asked Kennedy.

"We must descend to earth as soon as we can, Dick, and then wait."

After a run of sixty miles, the "Victoria" descended on a deserted spot at the north end of the lake. The grapnels caught in a low tree, and Kennedy fastened them securely.

Night came on, but neither Ferguson nor Kennedy had a moment's sleep.

next morning, the 13th of may, the first thing the travelers did was to search the part of the lake border where they were situated. It was a species of island composed of firm land in the midst of an extensive marsh. Around this piece of terra firma large reeds grew, as high as average European trees, and extended as far as eye could reach.

These trackless swamps rendered the position of the "Victoria" secure; it was only necessary to explore the lake shore; the immense sheet of water expanded towards the east, and nothing was visible on the horizon—neither islet nor continent was to be seen.

The two friends had not yet ventured to speak of their unfortunate companion. Kennedy was the first to impart his surmises to the doctor.

"Perhaps Joe is not lost, after all," said he. "He is a


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 weakness and sickness had hung on him all afternoon, in spite of Mrs. Goodloe's motherly efforts to alleviate his suffering and lift the cloud from his spirits.

He told her, openly and without reservation, exactly what he had gone through, and the sincerity with which she expressed herself of her belief in his honesty was worth more to him than all the physic and balm that a medicine chest would hold.

To add to this comfort Malvina came to his room and put her hand on his forehead, and said she knew the association men were wrong in the matter, and that she would take his part against the whole range, just as he had walked into the room where the infare supper was going on and taken her part against the outrageous claims of Zebedee Smith.

Hartwell thanked her, and the pain and sickness—for a great deal of it was homesickness and loneliness—began to grow lighter at once, and the beauty to come back to the edges of the world. And Mrs. Goodloe brought him chicken broth, and sat by him while he drank it, and put a wet towel over his eyes, and he fell asleep. It was on her recommendation when he woke after sunset that he went to the light-handed Mr. Noggle and besought his ministrations.

Sympathy and food, though both of them were just the plain, common and wholesome kind with-

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 out spice or garnishment to whet the vanity, brought about a quick and brightening change. Texas was almost himself when he started to visit Uncle Boley after supper, clothed in new raiment, his grand black coat coming down on his thighs. As for the suspicion of the association, it troubled him little now. Duncan's adjustment of vision after the fight lent hope that all of them would see him right in time. But there was the challenge from Dee Winch, who felt himself aggrieved because he had hired Texas into the trust that they thought he had betrayed. Winch was not big enough to stand back and look at it like the generous man that Texas had taken him to be. His mind and sympathy were as inelastic as the dried beef upon which he lived, and his heart was atrophied like a chunk of it hanging in the smoke. His threat haunted Hartwell like a whisper in his ears. It would not leave him; he was conscious of it every breath.

He found that the story of his supposed treason had gone to Uncle Boley's shop ahead of him, and all over the town, in fact.

"Yes, they're cussin' you high and low, Texas, wherever they're got interest in cattle, one way or another, for this is a cow town, as I told you before," the old man said.

Uncle Boley sat looking out of his window—he was at work on a special rush job when Texas en-

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 tered—his waxed end hanging down his beard, his attention off the boot in the strap.

Texas thought that he avoided him with his eyes, and felt the hurt of that distrust more than he had suffered from Sawyer's fists. He believed the old man was going to repudiate him, afraid of the cattlemen's censure for having been his sponsor in a way. He could not blame Uncle Boley for that. Above all the others he had a reason—the reason of his butter and bread, his bed, his humble roof. If they should take their patronage away from him, all would fail.

"But let 'em cuss and be damned—I'll stand by you!" said Uncle Boley, with great and sudden vehemence. He whacked the bench with his hammer, a flush of defiance in his face, the light of a fight in his eyes.

Texas was taken around so suddenly by this declaration that he had no wind for a moment. And then when his wind came back, he hadn't any words, he was so chocked up with the big feeling of gratitude and admiration which rose up in him for this brave, honest old man. He went around the end of the little counter and gave Uncle Boley his hand, and looked him in the eye what men do not say to each other in times like that.

"That's all right, gol dern 'em!" said Uncle Boley. "I knew some of them fellers when they

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 was stealin' calves, and I can tell more'n one of 'em how they got their start. Let 'em come to me, gol dern 'em, and I'll put a cuckle burr under their tails that'll make them twist forty ways a minute!"

Texas was moved the deeper by this expression of faith and loyalty because it had come from Uncle Boley's tongue before he had heard Hartwell's side of it. Now he sat down near his ancient friend as he plied his thread, and told of his adventures with the invading cattlemen, sparing nothing, not even the visit of Fannie Goodnight to the border, and her part in his capture and disgrace. He believed that it was due to Uncle Boley to know all this, even though the figuring of Fannie Goodnight in it might place him in a more unenviable situation. Uncle Boley worked on in silence a little while, according to his way when pondering a heavy matter. Then:

"Do you reckon that girl was on the square, Texas?"

"I think she was, sir."

"But you know how a woman can act up, Texas. She can throw it all over a man when it comes to actin' up. But that feller a cussin' her seems to carry out her word that she tried to tip it off to you and spoke too late."

"I've turned it in my mind from all sides, Uncle

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 Boley, and I'm of the belief that she tried to do the square thing after she got to thinkin' it over, but spoke too late, sir, as you say."

He said nothing about Fannie's earnest declaration of the length she would go for him, nor of the liking that she had so openly expressed. No matter what she was, or had been in her day, she was sincere when she told him that, her hand on his arm, her eyes and voice as earnest as a woman's ever were.

No matter what she was, or had been in her day, indeed, there was an untainted spot in the core of her heart, and an upreaching and a yearning to have better than the world had given her, or her own wilful choice had brought. That much would keep between Fannie Goodnight and him. He asked Uncle Boley to hold her name out of it, as a mark of gratitude. The old man readily saw it in that light, and assented.

"We'll set our pegs and see how things turn out," Uncle Boley said. "If Duncan's beginnin' to see through a chink, that's a good sign he's comin' around to your side. Winch—he'll be the hardest snag in the road. You can't argue with that man. If you meet him, Texas, don't wait the bat of your eye—let him have it, right in the gizzard. Yes, and if I have to take a hand I'll take it, by granger!

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 I've been a good friend to Dee, and I've stood by him, but I ain't a goin' to set around and see him sling no gun on you."

"I don't want to have any more brawls and disturbances while I'm here, either, but I can't run away from that little man. And I ain't got any particular business right around here any more, Uncle Boley, but I couldn't look at even myself in the glass if I was to let him drive me off thataway."

"You ain't got no business around here, heh?" Uncle Boley spoke almost derisively, he put so much force into his words. He pulled at his threads as if he was out of humor with the boot, and wanted to hurt it. "Well, Sallie McCoy she's stopped in here every blessed day since she come back from Duncan's askin' me if I got any word from you. Nothing to stay around for, heh? Well, if I had half that much to stay around for anywhere, they couldn't drive me out of the country with dogs."

"I'm proud to know she took such a kindly interust in a stranger, sir. Do you suppose she'll think I'm a crook when she hears about this?"

"It takes more than rumors and suspicions to turn Sallie McCoy agin a friend."

"But I'm scarcely so near to her as a friend, sir. An acquaintance, a man passed by in the big road; that is all, sir."

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 "Of course, if you don't want to be no more than that!"

"I do want to be more than that, I'm pinin' and pindlin' away to be more than that, Uncle Boley, sir. But I couldn't approach her under any false pretenses, or under present unfortunate conditions. I'm a footless wayfarer, Uncle Boley; I have no place to lay my head. Here to-day, away to-morrow, like a bird on the wing, a pore old ornery crow-bird, sir, that's sailed off by the wind ever' whichway, and no place to light at all, and call it home."

"Then it's time you was makin' a home, and puttin' somebody in it to look after it, by granger! It makes me mad to hear a young feller with the daylight of his life ahead of him growlin' about havin' no place to light. What does a man need but a woman, and what does a woman need but a man?"

Uncle Boley's exposition of the simplicity of life drew that glimmering smile into Hartwell's eyes, and broke the stern corners of his mouth.

"Well sir, a house to live in, and something to eat, I reckon, ahead of most everything else," he ventured to reply.

"He'd be a dam' pore stick of furniture if he couldn't git 'em!"

"And I suppose there'd be a fire needed to keep

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 them warm, and coal-oil for the lamp," pursued Texas, his smile broadening until a little glint of his marvelously white teeth could be seen.

"Yes, and if he had a pair of eyes like Sallie McCoy's aside of him he'd have a light to cheer him through the darkest night that ever set, and he'd have a fire in her heart that'd warm him if death was a standin' over agin the wall. Tell me!"

"He would, sir," said Texas, very softly, his eyes fixed as one who saw a vision," he would so, as sure as you're born!"

"Then why in the dickens don't you take her?"

"Why, she wouldn't have me, sir—she wouldn't begin to have me!"

Texas reduced himself, and emphasized his unworthiness so sharply that he seemed nothing but a point.

"How do you know?"

"She's a noblewoman, sir, one of the Almighty's royalty! The ground she walks on—"

"Is like any other ground—muddy or dry, 'cordin' to the weather. All you got to do, Texas, is spraddle out and throw a ham into it, like you're able if you set your jaw to a thing. Take a holt of something in this town that'll make you money—you don't have to wait till you get a gripsack full of it to ask Sallie to have you; she's the kind that'd be a help to any man."

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 "I'm most certain she would, sir. But a man couldn't ask her to meet greater hardships than she'd leave at home, maybe. And I'd be as keen as a bee in the early mornin' to start up in something here, Uncle Boley, if I knew what to turn to and had the means."

"Can you run a drug store?"

"I don't even know what it is they keep in 'em that makes that purty smell, sir."

"H-m; that's too bad. I knowed a feller run a drug store down in Kansas City, and he cleared more than he took in. It's the finest business a man ever opened, if he knows how to run it. I don't reckon you was brought up to doctorin' or lawyerin', was you Texas?"

"No sir, I wasn't, it grieves me to say, Uncle Boley."

Uncle Boley sewed on until he had used up his thread, then he took the boot out of the strap and stood it on the floor with reflective preoccupation. He was silent a good while, Texas watching him with the candle of humor in his eyes, his face softened in its homely austerity by the affection that he held for this simple, garrulous old soul.

"Well, I'll think out something for you, son," Uncle Boley said at last. "You go on ahead and fix that part of it up with Sallie, and by the time you're ready I'll have some plan figgered out if you

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 don't hit on one you like better yourself. Maybe we'll make it a double weddin'."

Uncle Boley winked, in his quick and devilish way, and jerked his head triumphantly in the manner of a man who knows that he is uncovering an astonishing surprise.

"You don't tell me! I congratulate you, sir, and I doubly congratulate the lady, whoever she may be."

Uncle Boley's face wore a cast of high importance as he went to his little counter and opened the drawer. He took from it a photograph, which he passed to Texas.

"She's comin' down from Topeky in a week or two. She wants to see how fur I can jump."

The picture was of a woman past her prime, a long-necked woman, thin of features, ringlets of heavy hair on her shoulders. She was gaily dressed, in a vogue long past, with tight sleeves and little upstanding pokes on the shoulders. There were a good many flowers about her, and much jewelry. Her eyes were hollow, her cheeks sad, as if she had wept the passing of many men.

The photograph was old, and Texas knew it at once for one of those curios which came from the tents of traveling photographers when the art was in the infancy of the dry plate.

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 "This is the lady you mentioned to me one time, sir?"

Texas wanted to show interest, a polite, if not a deep interest, although the humor of Uncle Boley's romance was one of the hardest things to bear that he ever had met.

"That's Gertie Moorehead," Uncle Boley said, very proud of her, and very proud of himself for getting on the road of winning her to his hoary bosom.

"I wish you much joy," said Texas, in the quaint words of congratulation with which they still greet bridal people in certain remote corners of this wide land.

"She'll be down," Uncle Boley took the picture, held if off at arm's length, studied it with romantic softness in his eyes, "to look me over and talk it up between us. If she's suited, we'll hitch. It never was good for a man to be alone, and it never will be. The longer he's alone the worse it gits."

"Yes, sir, I guess it must, sir."

"I can take care of a woman, I ain't none of your old used-up stiffs. I'm a better man than many a one of forty-seven I could step out of that door and lay my hands on!"

"Yes, and a sight better than some of them at thirty-seven, I'll bet you a purty, sir."

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 "Well, I ain't crowin' over nobody in petic'lar, but I've took care of myself. You'll be stayin' down at Malvina's, will you?"

"I've sent word to Mr. Winch that I'm to be found there."

Uncle Boley's manner of assurance and sprightliness fell from him at the mention of Winch. He became at once serious and silent, as if the overhanging threat pressed upon his heart.

"Yes, and if he gits you, Texas, I'll stoop down and I'll pick up your gun, and I'll foiler him to the rim of daylight but what I put a bullet in his heart!"

Texas lifted his head with a new feeling of pride, and looked the old man straight in the bright, blue eyes.

"It means a great deal to a man to have a friend who will go that far for him, Uncle Boley, sir!"

Texas went away from Uncle Boley's shop feeling unaccountably lonely in spite of the evidence of confidence and affection that the old man had shown. He could not put the shadow of Dee Winch's threat against his life out of his mind. More than once in the passage between shop and hotel he caught himself unconsciously watching from side to side, unconsciously straining for the sound of a footstep behind him.

It was a disquieting thing to live with a sentence

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 of death hanging over one's head that way. He was free to walk in the light or the dark with other men, and to pursue the business of his life in the accustomed trend, but he could not be free from the heavy dread of the sudden meeting, the flash of arms, somebody reeling in the road, his gun dropped at his feet. That was a demand note which Dee Winch had taken from him; it must be paid upon presentation.

Even in his room he could not find the relaxation that is due a man without an uncommon care. This thing hung over him, placed him in a vacuum, it seemed, through which the sound of other men's activities came but dimly, and as of things secondary to his own important strait.

It had come between him and all his planning, it stood in the foreground cutting off all view an arm's length beyond. Over his spirits it was as heavy as a debasing drug; in his thoughts it obtruded constantly, like the nagging tone of a hateful voice. The alertness of the hunted was in every nerve; caution had become exaggerated into a pain. There could be no rest, there could be no moment of relaxation for his strained faculties until this thing had been met and finished.

Hartwell had become a listening man.

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ARTWELL was not without offers of employment next day. Malvina wanted to put him in as night clerk in her office, a place created out of her generosity for the sole purpose of offering it to him. Not that a night clerk was not needed in the Woodbine Hotel, indeed, for people came in at all hours, many of them boisterous, more of them sullen and red-eyed and mean from liquor and losses at the gambling joints.

But Texas refused it with grateful expressions, only to be waited on a little while later by Jud Springer, the gambler whose house had been closed by the mayor's one-sided application of his own law. Springer had come back with three quick-handed friends behind him, and was planning to reopen his place that night. He wanted to put Texas in as chief of his squad, and offered big inducements in in the remunerative way.

This offer Texas also was obliged to put behind him, with such modest discount of his competency as to lift him to the pinnacle of the gambler's respect. He had no intention of taking sides with

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 any faction in Cottonwood, nor of arranging himself against the law, farcical as it might be.

It was a question with him what to do, indeed. His money would soon waste away, even at the very moderate rate for lodging and board which Malvina had made in his case. Something would have to be set going shortly.

He could not leave there to seek employment, for he had passed his word to Winch. That appointment was an obligation. To run away from it would be equal to the repudiation of debt. It would follow a man, and cling to him like a taint; he never could lift up his head in honorable company again.

So there he would stay until Dee Winch came, and this matter was finished for all time. There would be no other way of easing the strain of listening, as wearing on a man to bear as a contracted muscle for which there was no relief. One way or another their meeting in the streets of Cottonwood would end this thing.

He was resentful in his mental attitude toward Winch. A man had no right arbitrarily to throw another under the necessity of defending his life on any such groundless pretext. It appeared to him that it was a forced excuse for Winch to ease for another week or month the blood thirst that had fallen on him like some unholy disease. He did

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 not want to kill Winch; in his heart there was not one shadow against the man that would justify the thought. But he was determined fully to act according to Uncle Boley's advice. If Winch should beat him to his gun when they met, he would have to move faster than a snake.

It was late in the afternoon of the day after his arrival at Cottonwood from the range that Hartwell met Sallie McCoy at Uncle Boley's shop. She was just leaving; the old man had quit his bench to attend her with ceremonious courtesy to the door.

"Talk of the devil!" said Uncle Boley.

"Oh, Uncle Boley!" she protested, while a warm, soft flush drowned her face, and a smile leaped in her eyes like the fire of a home-hearth as she gave Hartwell her hand.

"I mighty proud to see you, Miss McCoy."

Hartwell bent over her hand in his quaint, old cavalier way. He was not wearing his long coat that day; the great heavy revolver that Ed McCoy had carried to his death hung on his thigh like a sword.

"Well, if he ain't the devil he's blood related to him, accordin' to these cow-men around here," Uncle Boley said.

"You surely would think so, sir."

"Not all of us—even cow-men," she assured him,

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 laving him for a moment in the cool of her clear brown eyes.

"You are a host on my side, Miss McCoy."

"Yes, and you're a stoppin' my door up so the air can't blow in on me," Uncle Boley complained, with a great comical exaggeration of injury and pretense of suffocation. "Git out of here and do your talkin' and passin' compliments, you two young sky-looters!"

He shooed them out like chickens, chuckling in his beard, and watched them as they went off together in the slant sunlight of the autumn day.

Sallie was on her way to gather goldenrod, she said, to adorn her room at school. It grew abundantly by the roadside everywhere, but it was better just out of town, away from the dust of wheels and hoofs. Yes, he might go if he wished; he would be useful to help carry it, for she meant to gather a great deal, oh, an immense amount of it, indeed.

The world was full of gold that day, of black-eyed Susans wearing bonnets of it, of sunflowers blooming late, destined to fall before the frost, and goldenrod in banks and wide stretches over the wild meadowlands. For it is the way of nature on the Kansas plains to send springtime white-garlanded, like a bride, and autumn splendid in a golden cope, like a luxurious bishop come to give benediction on the summer labors of men.

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 They worked like gleaners in the ancient fields, freighting themselves with flowers, and what the moonlight had begun that night when they sat under the cottonwood at Duncan's ranch, the gold of this autumn evening brought to completion and welded so fast into his heart that Texas knew it never could come away. He must prepare the ways of life thenceforward for two; the road leading away from Cottonwood seemed so remote that his feet never would find it any more.

There was a great deal to be said, a good many sighs to be spent on both sides, about the business of gathering two armfuls of goldenrod, it seemed. Perhaps hearts out of which sentiment had dried, such as florists' hearts, would not have found it a long task nor a particular one in that field of abundant bloom, but it was nearing sundown when Sallie and Hartwell turned their faces again toward the town. The schoolhouse was on the way to Sallie's home, and there they were to leave the flowers. Early in the morning she would go and arrange them along the bleak walls of her room.

Never before in his life had Texas Hartwell gone carrying a sheaf of yellow flowers beside a lady. It was a rare day, indeed, an occasion of great pride. Children came smiling to greet their teacher, little girls skipped beside her, turning up

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 adoring eyes. There was room for all of them in her heart, along with him, Hartwell knew; room indeed for the whole world without crowding him and causing him one jealous pain.

"There's Mr. Stroud," said Sallie, as they approached the schoolhouse, "the principal of our school—my boss. I'd like you to meet him."

"I'll be proud to," Texas declared.

Stroud was locking the front door of the whitepainted, churchlike building in which he presided over the mental discipline of Cottonwood's youth. Hartwell saw that he was a tall, harsh-jointed man, surly of look, ram-faced, a dusting of white in his heavy, rough black hair. He looked around at them as he put the key in his pocket, a frown on his sour face, turned, and hurried off the other way, giving Sallie no chance to present her friend.

"He doesn't seem to be inclined to make my acquaintance, Miss Sallie," said Hartwell, feeling the cut deeply.

"Mr. Stroud is a peculiar man," she excused, flushing in humiliation for the necessity of making apology for the schoolmaster's boorish behavior.

"It galls a man to be in public disfavor to the depth that I have fallen, Miss Sallie; it hurts like saw-grass on the naked skin."

"I know it does, Mr. Hartwell, but as long as

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 —some of us believe in you, and your conscience is clear, you can hold your head up in spite of their prejudice."

"As long as you believe in me, Miss Sallie, I can feel the clouds scrape my hair."

He waited outside while she unlocked the door and left her burden of blooms in her room, and not until he had parted from her at her own gate was he conscious again of the listening strain for the unheard footfall at his back. That phantom had left him for a little while in what seemed to him her holy presence. Now it had returned in aggravation, as if to impress upon him the fatuity of planning any felicitous thing for his future days.

There could be no peace, there could be no planning, indeed, until the day of reckoning between him and Dee Winch. Until that day he must walk with his life in pawn, with no right to love and inspire love, no right to plan and build and hope like other men. With his faculties centered on the invisible thing behind him, ready to wheel and fire at the first sound of that threatening step, he must walk the earth a listening man.

Moodily he walked the streets after supper that evening, turning in his mind many things. His heart urged him to the presence of Sallie McCoy, where he knew he should find welcome and the comfort of faith, but his honor held him back.

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 Crowds which seemed to have sprung from the ground like grasshoppers were out, the din of the musicians in the two rival dance halls was shrieking into the night. All was animation, with the flush of the night's first potations on the cheeks of men who would grow ugly and quarrelsome as the accumulated poison struck deeper and the polluted night wore on.

Texas wondered how many men among them walked with their trailing shadows like him on the streets of Cottonwood that night. Many were there who had taken human life, against whom accounts remained to be balanced by law or kindred or friend. And there was growing at that hour trouble which probably would result in more shooting and slaying before many days.

Jud Springer had defied the mayor and opened his place, with an imported band which, in volume of sound at least, was ahead of anything that Cottonwood had ever heard. Business was going to his doors, for the lights were bright, and the shoulders of women gleamed under them like insidious flowers.

Hartwell wondered what had become of Fannie Goodnight, the glimpse of those half-naked women having brought her sharply into his mind. There must have been a good deal of that kind of life in Fannie Goodnight's experience, he believed, for the

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 sight of those women immediately to suggest her. Whether she had put it behind her and opened a new account, of course he did not know. One way or another she seemed to have put something between her and her past, or the worst of her past.

He felt that he owed Fannie a friendly turn if it ever should come his way to pay it, for he was convinced that the good in her had moved her to warn him that night at the peril of hard usage for herself. He doubted if they should ever meet again, for it was likely that those who had used her to entrap him had sent her away from that country, distrustful of her for any future employment in their schemes.

Mrs. Goodloe was in the hotel office knitting a necktie of scarlet silk when he returned from his aimless rambling. She held the finished portion of it up to Hartwell's view and admiration.

"It's for Ollie's birthday," she said. "Do you think it'll become him?"

"It will make him look like a prince, ma'am," he assured her, with entire gravity.

Mentally he pictured the flaming adornment over Mr. Noggle's pea-green shirt, beneath his salmonlike, shallow chin. He surely would be a figure to fascinate the female eye when he stepped out arrayed in that ardent example of his mother-in-law's art.

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 "Ollie's a good boy, he treats Malvina like a perfect lady. She never knew what it was to have a man that'd take his hat off to her when he meets her in the street, just like she didn't belong to him, till she married Mr. Noggle."

Mrs. Goodloe was so touched by the courteous behavior of the barber that her voice shook with tenderness. Texas understood very well what such consideration meant to women whose lives had been as barren as Mrs. Goodloe's and Malvina's. His respect for the barber rose a little, in spite of his trade.

"Mr. Noggle is a gentleman, ma'am. Any man could tell that the minute he met him in the road."

"Yes, he is, Mr. Hartwell. He ain't much of a man for a fight, I don't reckon, till he's crowded to it, but all men ain't alike that way. You take Zeb Smith; he was always ready to knock somebody down, specially his wife. He never laid a hand on me, though, the ornery old houn'!"

"I'll just bet you a purty he never, ma'am!"

"No, and if he had I'd 'a' scalded him to the bone! I'd 'a' put a spider in his coffee if he'd 'a' been my old man, long before he ever took that cowardly sneak off to the Nation."

"He sure deserved two of 'em, ma'am. That man's got a breachy eye."

"He's as sneaky as a snake."

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 "I'll bet a purty he is."

"If you had all the horses together that man's stole they'd load a car."

"You don't tell me!"

"Yes, and cattle, too."

"Cattle, ma'am!"

"Millions of 'em. If he got a year for ever' one of 'em he'd be in the pen when Gabr'l blows his horn. Did you know he come sneaking around here as soon as he heard you'd left?"

"No ma'am, I didn't hear of it. Did he do any damage?"

"He didn't come here to the house, but he's back in town, workin' for Johnnie Mackey."

"What might that old scoun'rel be doin' for Mackey, ma'am?"

"Bouncerin'. He goes on at ten or 'leven and works till the crowds clear out. They don't know him very well here now, for this was only a new starter of a town when he left, and most of them fellers has come in since. He looks fierce, and he's mean. I guess he'll hold the job. Zeb's trick is to hit a man when he ain't expectin' it and lay him out—that's his way."

"He sure is a mean-lookin' man, ma'am."

"Yes, and Ollie's so nervous over him bein' in town he don't hardly dare to go to and from the shop. He's been thinkin' of movin' down here to

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 the hotel, but it wouldn't be as good. He'd lose trade by it, for he's centered where he is, and I tell him to buckle a gun on him and stick to it."

"That's the right advice, ma'am."

But advice which would profit Ollie Noggle nothing, and Texas knew it very well. He could imagine the barber's discomfort with that old sandstone savage hanging in the background like a threat.

"I and Malvina—we was just a talkin' a little while ago and sayin' that it would be a good thing for Ollie if him and you was to go pardners in the shop."

"Me, ma'am? Why, I never barbered nothin' in my life but a mule!"

"Not to do barberin', I don't mean, but just to kind of stay around and draw the line for Smith, and walk to and from the shop with Ollie."

"I can do that without bein' a pardner, ma'am, if it would help Ollie any, and I'd be proud."

"It would—it'd be the biggest help a man ever give another. That poor boy's up there at the shop right now, late as it is, waitin' for me or Malvina to come after him, and I'll bet he's sweatin' and trimblin' in every limb. Malvina's afraid to go over after him alone for fear of runnin' acrost Zeb, and both of us can't leave here. If this keeps on I'll load up a gun and drive that scalawag away from here myself!"

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 "I'll go right up to the shop, ma'am, and fetch him home."

Texas had to hurry out of her presence, her volley of thanks at his back for the provocation of laughter was greater that minute than at any time since he came to Cottonwood. In his imagination he could see Noggle's long narrow face at the door of his little shop, the sweat of his anxiety like the distillation of his precious ambergris on his brow.

It was a terrible thing for a man to be a coward like that, especially when the subject of his aversion Was so unworthy as Zeb Smith. Still, it was a pity that Smith, the old ruffian, should be allowed to give the simple-hearted Malvina so much distress. The old rooster ought to be run out of town, and Texas had half a mind to go to him and serve notice. But that would be putting himself up before the public in the light of a bad man, and it was a distinction that he did not court.

Noggle was a greatly relieved man when Texas stepped into his shop. He was so grateful that he capered about in light little prancings for his hat, his seersucker coat, his umbrella, and his gloves. Noggle never appeared on the street, by night or by day, without his gloves, if not on his hands, then held elegantly in one of them as if he had just taken them off.

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 Now, as he walked beside Texas, turning fearful glances this way and that for the terrible form of Zeb Smith, he made a very fashionable figure indeed, for all his fear. His hat was small and soft, of a dove-gray, pinched together at the crown like a tomato can that had been run over by a wagon wheel. It sat high on his curly hair, a little to one side, leaving free an abundant fluffy lock of that adornment to fall upon his left eyebrow. His trousers were light, and tight on his long, thin legs; perfume floated after him; his very presence proclaimed his trade.

In a little while he put aside his fear, for he was as simple in his trust as he was poor in valor, and walked beside Texas with the confidence of a child whose mother has come to convoy it home from school through the perils of street barbarians. Their way led past Johnnie Mackey's wide-open door. There was no other route to the hotel, except one that would have been roundabout, dark, and undignified to follow. Noggle seemed to have a sort of desperate satisfaction in passing the lair of his enemy.

Zeb Smith was standing in the door. Noggle did not see him among all who came and went through that gaping portal until it was too late to draw back, although Texas had picked him out

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 from afar. He must have looked as big as a church steeple to the barber, whose eyes began to grow as his jaw fell and his breath came short.

"There he is, there he is!" he whispered, shrinking behind his conductor. "You got your gun? Yes, oh, yes—you got it!"

Noggle sighed in the assurance and relief that the sight of the gun gave him, and Texas took him by the arm with firm grasp to hold him abreast and marched him so close up to Zeb Smith he could smell him. Smith came out to the sidewalk and glared fiercely on them as they passed under the bright lights.

"Huh! hired a nurse!" he scoffed.

Texas felt Noggle's flesh tremble under the sound of the rough taunting voice. Noggle could not have framed a word if his life depended on it, for his tongue was frozen against his teeth with fear, but Texas let go of his arm, turned and gave Smith a look that drove him like a kicked dog to the shelter of his door. His cur's courage returned to him there; he stood calling insults after them which drew laughter from the loungers at hand.

When they turned the corner the barber's breath began to go down as far as his first vest button again. He drew out his perfumed handkerchief from his breast pocket—where a corner of it was always displayed in the refinement of fashion and

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 the elegance of taste of which Noggle was the great exemplar—and wiped away the sweat of his agonizing fear.

"That feller'll go too fur one of these days!" he said.

"I think he's gone too far already," Texas allowed. "You could whip that man with one hand if you'd sail into him—why, I tell you he'd run so fast you never would be able to overtake him between here and the Nation."

Noggle looked back, and around him, to make certain that Smith had not followed nor cut across and headed them off.

"I'll do it, too! If I could ever git him in the shop for a shave I'd cut his throat clean down to his backbone!"

"I don't think he'll put his head in a trap thataway. You buy yourself a gun, and you wear it when you step out; then you march up to that man and slap his jaw and spraddle all over him like old folks. He'll beat time hittin' a streak out of this town, and I'll bet you a purty he will."

Noggle didn't warm up to the suggestion. Texas could see through him all around the edges; he hadn't any more heat in him than a hickory shad. He felt sorry for Malvina, for he knew that if there was any fighting to be done in that family she would have to do it, and he believed she would do

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 it if it came to pass where Zeb Smith ever ruffled a curl of Ollie's small, brainless head.

Ollie entered the hotel by a side door, and in his gratitude drew Texas in after him, where both of them were almost enveloped in Malvina's grateful embrace. Texas avoided her arms only by a quick withdrawal into the background, leaving the barber to bear it all alone.

Malvina cried a little, and declared that she thought he had been killed, which gave Ollie a lead for the announcement of his bloody intentions in regard to Zeb Smith. Malvina's cheeks paled on hearing this, and she clung to her new husband with trembling hands, for she knew that he was a sheep in his heart and a rabbit in his soul, but he was kind to her, and took off his hat when he met her on the street.

As for Texas, the valor of the barber in the house was not so diverting that moment as it might have been but for a circumstance that drew his attention toward the office, partly seen through the open door. A man had entered and saluted Mrs. Goodloe with friendly word, and was now selecting a cigar from the offering out of the showcase supporting the bell. His voice came into the room distinctly, and it was one that Texas would have known out of all the tumult of the earth.

There could not be two men afflicted with that

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 same, nosy, metallic, whanging voice. The man at the showcase was the one who had cursed Fannie Goodnight, and taunted him as he lay bound in the Texans' rawhide that night beside his supper fire.

Texas stepped to the door for a look at the man's face, but he had his cigar, and was going out to the street. He hastened to Mrs. Goodloe, eager in manner and voice, inquiring who her customer was.

"Why, that was Henry Stott, the banker. I thought you'd met Henry."

"I believe I have," said Texas grimly.

He stepped to the office door and looked after the banker as he passed down the street, the smoke of his cigar trailing after him. He was safe, he was anchored there, he wouldn't get away. And to-morrow there would be a reckoning between them.

So Stott was playing a double game against the cattlemen of that range. Doubtless the past three or four years of prosperity there had made loans slow, and the income from interest was not as brisk as it should have been. To make things merrier, Stott had gone back to his old trade of importing southern cattle, buying them with the funds of his depositors whose herds were now in peril.

If the cattlemen could be convinced of Stott's hand in bringing this danger to their herds, it would

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 be all day with the banker's future schemes in that country. He would be a lucky man, indeed, if he didn't stretch a lariat on somebody's up-ended wagon-tongue.

In the morning, Texas determined, his first business would be to hire a horse and ride to Duncan's, and lay the matter before the president of the Cattle Raisers' Association. For there could be no mistaking Stott; there could not be two men in the world, indeed, affected with voices such as his, and especially not in the small compass of Cottonwood and its tributary range.

But why wait for morning to go to Duncan's? The thought took hold of him with the eagerness of fire in dry grass. The desire to vindicate himself, and stand clean in the eyes of the men who had trusted him, was in his throat like a thirst. Duncan would return to Cottonwood with him; they could be there by the time Stott opened the bank in the morning.

Within half an hour Hartwell was on his way to Duncan's ranch, the cool night wind in his hot face as he galloped with free rein over the old cattle trail that led back into his native land.

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 pushed back into the center of Africa, towards the trackless deserts.

"We must halt," said he, "and come down to the earth; for Joe's sake, before everything, we must return above the lake; but first we must find a current in the opposite direction."

For a quarter of an hour they searched at different altitudes. The "Victoria" always drifted over the land. But fortunately, at 1,000 feet, a very violent wind carried them to the northwest.

It was scarcely possible that Joe had remained on one of the islands, else he would have found some means to make his presence known. Perhaps he had reached terra firma. Thus the doctor reasoned when he regained the north side of the lake.

As to fancy Joe drowned was ridiculous. A terrible idea had occurred to both Kennedy and Ferguson, viz., the number of alligators existing in these places. But neither had the courage to give vent to their supposition. At length it was impossible not to refer to the ever-present thought, and the doctor said boldly:

"Crocodiles are only met with upon the banks or islands of the lake. Joe has skill enough to avoid them; besides, they are not dangerous, and the Africans bathe fearlessly and with impunity."

Kennedy did not reply; he preferred silence to the discussion of such a terrible eventuality.

The doctor perceived the town of Lari about five o'clock in the afternoon. The inhabitants were gathering their cotton crops before their huts of plaited straw, in the midst of their own well-kept enclosures. This assemblage of fifty houses occupied a small depression in the valley, which extended between the bases of the mountains. The violence of the wind carried the doctor too far, but it again changed, and he descended at the exact point of departure in the little island of hard ground where they had passed the previous night. The grapnel, instead of being fastened to a tree, was secured to the reeds mixed with the thick mud of the marsh, which gave a good holding ground. The doctor had considerable trouble to control the balloon, but at length the wind fell and the two friends kept watch together, almost despairing.


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EXAS HARTWELL rode back to Cottonwood the next afternoon, a disappointed and humiliated man. Malcolm Duncan had listened to his charges involving Henry Stott with surprise which grew into incredulity, and at last broke in a storm of open scorn.

It was impossible that Stott could have had a hand in running the Texas cattle, Duncan said. He had known Stott for years, and had done business with him long enough to know that he was a square man, and above any such double-handed dealing as that charged.

"We'll let this go no further," said Duncan, as if doing Hartwell a great favor in burying the charges in his breast. "I wouldn't want to stand in your shoes if Henry ever hears of this."

Duncan went farther; he advised Hartwell to take the first train out of Cottonwood, no matter which way it was going. He was still giving Texas the benefit of the doubt that he held in his case, according to the basic justness of his mind.

Hartwell appreciated this half fairness, even

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 though he saw that his case was hopeless with the cattlemen. Fannie Goodnight's testimony, even though he might be able to bring her forward to speak in his behalf, would have no weight against the word of a man like Stott.

Fannie appeared to have dropped out of that part of the world. Since his return to Cottonwood Hartwell had kept a vain lookout for her. Of Stott's complicity he had not the faintest doubt. The banker was not only involved, but was the leading power in the venture of the Texas herd. But Hartwell was sick of the hopelessness of ever proving it, heavy with the depression that had been added to his already gloomy load.

Stott was bound to hear of his charge to Duncan, in spite of the cow-man's apparent generosity. When it came to the banker's ears he would be hot to silence the source of it. More gun-slingers would be set after Texas; awake and asleep he would strain and listen for their feet behind him. Truly, Duncan's advice to quit the country was kind counsel, but his going would be his conviction in the minds of the few who still believed in him there. He would not go under a cloud, not if all the gun-slingers on the Arkansas Valley range put his name down in their books of doom.

Uncle Boley was not working when Texas went to the shop to report on his absence and the cause

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 of it. The old man was sitting behind the counter in his chair, his empty bench before him, his tools lying where he had put them down, a partly finished boot standing on the floor. The only indication that Uncle Boley had any interest at all left in his business was the waxed-end which he held in his mouth, dark-trailing over his white beard.

"Well, Texas, you're back, and hell's to pay—hel-l's to pay!"

Uncle Boley was disturbed beyond anything in his carriage that Texas ever had witnessed. He got up, rather hurriedly, chewing on the thread as if he would bite it in two, shook his head, sighed. Texas was alarmed. He felt a coldness as of some approaching dread come over him as he hurried forward.

"What's the matter, Uncle Boley? What's happened, sir?"

"Hell's to pay and no pitch hot!" said Uncle Boley gloomily. "They've fired Sallie."

"Fired her? You don't tell me, sir! What reason in this world could they—"

"For bein' seen walkin' along the street with a feller called Texas Hartwell, the most suspicioned feller this side of No Man's Land."

"Can it be possible that I have brought this calamity to Miss Sallie, sir?"

Texas stood before the old man, his face blood-

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 less, his nostrils flaring as if he breathed acid. He was struck rigid by the news, a cold, deep fury in him that seemed to clog his blood.

"It's a fact, to the shame and disgrace of this town. She's fired, turned out like she was a strumpet in the street, and her the cleanest, purest little flower that ever kissed the wind."

"I've brought that on her! It was a woeful day, Uncle Boley, that I ever struck this town!"

"You ain't to blame, Texas; I know you're clean."

"But what will she think about me, sir?"

"I was to blame, more than either of you two—I sent you off together to pick them flow's. Stroud—he's at the bottom of it—he's been tryin' to marry Sallie two or three years, and him old enough to be her daddy twice."

"We saw the scoun'rel; he slunk away before we could speak to him, right at the schoolhouse door."

"Stroud must 'a' done it for revenge on Sallie. He took it up with Henry Stott, chairman of the board, and the other two members follered Stott's lead. Stott thought firin' her on your account would make him a little soldier with the cow-men."

"Let me tell you something about Stott, sir," Texas requested, his hand earnestly on the old man's shoulder. And there he told him of his discovery the night past, of his ride to Duncan's, and

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 of Duncan's angry refusal to entertain the charge.

Uncle Boley nodded now and then as Hartwell proceeded to the end.

"Stott's workin' to blacken you so deep nobody'll believe you. He don't want you to have any standin' at all in case you ever suspicion him and tell it. Firin' Sallie helps. It shows you up as a man with a curse ag'in' him that passes on to whosomever he touches."

Texas stood, shoulders up, his body stiff as iron, his eyes fixed in frowning glare on the street through the open door as the old man spoke. Now he turned suddenly, holding out his hand as if in farewell.

Lifting wondering eyes, Uncle Boley took it, and felt that it was as cold as the flesh of the dead.

"Uncle Boley, you've been a powerful good friend to me; you've stood by me when I was a kicked dog in the corner, and I'll carry the gratitude for it in the warmest place in my heart, sir, the longest day I live. If I don't happen to see you no more, sir, I want you to know that I wish you well, now and hereafter, for evermore."

"Why, in God's name, boy—why, Texas—what—what're you goin' to do?"

The old man clung to his hand, stroking it with his grease-black fingers, looking up at his young friend with frightened, appealing eyes.

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 "I'm a goin' to call that scoun'rel out, sir, and give him the chance for his life he doesn't deserve. I'm either a goin' to kill him or he'll kill me!"

"Stroud—do you mean Stroud?"

"I mean that polecat Stott, Uncle Boley. Him and me can't breathe together in this world one hour more."

"Wait a minute—wait a minute or two, Texas. Let me think this over—let me think it over, son."

Uncle Boley was pathetic in his perplexity. Tears came wandering down his beard; his hand shook as he clung to Hartwell to hold him back from the execution of his desperate resolution.

"Sir—"

"It wouldn't do any good to kill him—if you kill him you'll shut up the last mouth that can clear you, Texas—don't you see you will?"

"Uncle Boley, I'll make him sign a statement. There ain't no argument and no pleadin' under the sun can stop me in what I've set out to do."

Texas was gone before more could be said to delay him. Uncle Boley went to the door and looked after him, a score of wild schemes rising in his mind to hurry after him and prevent the tragedy, but each of them he dropped as quickly as it came to him, and stood silent and impotent while Texas rushed along the street toward the bank. The wrath of a patient man had broken its re-

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 sharp lad and a first-rate swimmer. He had no difficulty in swimming across the Firth of Fourth at Edinburgh. We shall see him again, depend upon it; I cannot say how or when, but do not let us neglect anything that might give him an opportunity to rejoin us.

"Heaven grant it may be as you suggest!" replied the doctor, in a voice choked with emotion. "We will do everything in the world to find our friend. Let us put things to rights at once; and first of all let us take off the exterior covering of the balloon, which will relieve us of 650 lbs. weight, and is surely worth the trouble to get rid of."

The doctor and Kennedy set to work, they overcame the greatest difficulties. It was necessary to tear the tough taffetas away bit by bit, and to cut it into strips to pull it through the meshes of the network. The rent made by the birds' beaks was many feet in length.

This operation occupied at least four hours; but at length the interior balloon, entirely freed, did not appear to have suffered at all. The

The "Victoria" was now diminished by a fifth. This difference was sufficient to astonish Kennedy.

"Will it carry us?" he asked.

"We need fear nothing on that score," said the doctor; "I will re-establish the equilibrium, and if our poor Joe return, we shall be able to resume our route as usual."

"At the moment he fell, Samuel, if my recollection serve me, we were not far from an island."

"I remember; but this isle, like all those in Lake Tchad, is no doubt inhabited by a race of pirates and murderers. These savages have been witnesses of our accident, and if Joe has fallen into their hands, unless superstition protects him, what will become of him?"

"He is a man of resource, I tell you; I have great confidence in his pluck and intelligence."

"I hope he will prove so. Now, Dick, you can go and shoot in the neighborhood, without going too far, mind. It is absolutely necessary for us to replenish our larder, of which the greater part has been sacrificed."

"All right, Samuel, I shall not be long away."

Kennedy took a double-barrelled gun, and advanced into the giant reeds towards a coppice at no great distance, and


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 straint; Uncle Boley knew that if he met Stott he would kill him, with no thought of future consequences to himself.

It was easy to follow Hartwell's progress along the street, for people fell out of his way as if he came carrying the contamination of a fatal disease. Those who did not know him, and had no reason to fear him for his notoriety, read in his face something that made them give him a wide road, and stand gazing after him to see where his wrath would fall. Uncle Boley groaned, believing that this was indeed the great day of trouble, as Hartwell disappeared in the bank.

Uncle Boley could not remain in the door any longer. He feared to see what was to follow; feared that he might be called upon to give testimony against Texas in the dread hour of his trial. There would be enough to do that without him, for people were pressing toward the bank, craning necks, crowding upon each other's heels, to see what this desperate man was about to do.

Uncle Boley could read in their excitement that they believed Texas was going to rob the bank, for some of them were running as if to summon help or arm themselves for the protection of their money in Henry Stott's safe. Uncle Boley turned from the door.

Back behind his counter he sat huddled, an old,

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 old man for the first time in his life, fearing to hear what he listened for, afraid of the rush in the street that would tell him the thing was done. A long time he listened, and grew dumb in his sickening anxiety. At last there came a step that he knew on the walk before his door, and a form in the frame of it that was dearer to him than he would have owned an hour ago. Texas was back, heavy of foot and weary.

"He went to Kansas City last night," he said.

Uncle Boley clasped his hands to his temples and bowed his head.

"Thank God!" he said.

So he sat, his white head bent, his calloused hands clasping his temples. Texas stood beside the counter, panting. His face was white as if only the ashes of his soul remained out of the fire of his anger.

"I can wait," he said.

Uncle Boley slowly lifted his head. There were tears on his beard again; a look of age such as he never had worn before made his face softly sad and gentle. He got up, reaching out his hand with the groping slowness of a blind man, touched Texas on the shoulder, ran his fingers down his arm as if to satisfy himself that Hartwell had indeed returned.

"Thank God!" he said again.

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 "He'll come back in a day or two, they said. I can wait."

"Yes, we can all wait," Uncle Boley said. "We can wait the Almighty's time to make straight the crooked paths and lead every man to his punishment and reward. I thank God that Henry Stott was gone! There was more than chance in it. Go and pump a fresh bucket of water, son, and take a good drink, and come back here and set down and cool off and take possession of your mind."

Texas did as the old man bade him. He put his hat down on the floor beside his heel when he came back and sat near Uncle Boley, his long black hair wild on his forehead, his face as gaunt as a man who had but one desire in him, and that a desire hot in his heart as molten iron.

Uncle Boley thought of ten reasons to base an argument on against killing Henry Stott, but he saw that none of them would be effective in Hartwell's present high state of strain and anger. Let him cool a night, and then reason it with him; that would be the plan. So Uncle Boley took up his work, making a show of being composed, and sewed on quite a spell with never a word.

"Have you seen Miss Sallie since this trouble happened to her, Uncle Boley?"

Texas appeared to be cooling off already. His

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 voice was steady, and it sounded like it came out of a reasonable man. But Uncle Boley saw that the fire of destruction still raged in his soul, for the reflection of it was glowing in his eyes.

"She stopped in here on her way home this morning, as broke up over it as a young bird that's been blowed out of its nest in a storm."

"Did she have much blame to lay on me, sir?"

"She didn't have one word of blame for you, Texas."

"But don't you reckon she must feel I'm a scoun'rel, Uncle Boley?"

"I don't recollect that she said any such a word."

"Everybody's down on me so in this country; all but you and one or two others, that I couldn't blame her. I've bungled things since I came to this place—I've stumbled around like a blind horse."

"Well, don't muss 'em up any worse from now on than you can help, son. You wasn't to blame for what's happened, only for lettin' that girl rope you in down there on the line that night, and I reckon I'd 'a' done the same thing if I'd 'a' been in your place, or most any man would."

"Yes, that was my one mistake," Texas admitted regretfully. "And I suspicioned something, all the time, too. But it's done now, sir, and regrets won't never set it straight. They come too late to do any good, just like that girl tryin' to warn me after them

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 fellers was standin' around me with their ropes in their hands."

"I want you to cool off on this business of Henry Stott, Texas, and in the morning we'll talk it over, ca'm and reasonable. No, don't up and tell me now what you're goin' to do when he comes back. A night makes a mighty big difference in a feller's plans sometimes—a difference as wide as the State of Kansas. You go along up and see Sallie after a while, and talk it over with her and her ma, and see what they think about it."

"Do you think Miss Sallie would care to see me, sir, after this disgrace I've fetched on her?"

"I'd run the resk if I was in your place."

Texas took up his hat, a look of eagerness in his eyes, a flush of color driving the pallor of his dying anger out of his face.

"I'll go right on up, sir; I've got a whole lot I want to say to her and explain. I aim to tell her what I've found out about Stott."

"I believe I'd wait till after supper," Uncle Boley suggested kindly, to cover the humiliation that lay in the caution, "till along after dark a little while."

Texas dropped his hat, the eager light flickered out of his eyes.

"Yes, I don't want to take any more trouble and disgrace to her door. I'll wait till after dark."

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RS. McCOY received Texas in subdued severity. She was a tall, dark woman, proud and handsome, an aristocrat in every line of her body, every tradition of her past. She was as strangely out of place in Cottonwood as a fine vase would have been on Malvina Noggle's shelf among the thick, chipped china at the green hotel. But not more aristocratic, nor high and mighty in her bearing, that evening than Texas Hartwell, indeed. He had not come to that house as a penitent or a culprit seeking exculpation, but as a gentleman who was sure of himself, across whose conscience not a shadow fell. He came as a champion, to give his earnest pledge that he would see the wrongs righted for both Sallie and himself before he left that town.

This he hastened to tell Mrs. McCoy, standing in the hall, where his features were clouded in the light of the candle that she carried. She stood very erect and dignified, and heard him through his brief and earnest introduction without comment.

"Step inside, sir; I will light the lamp," she said,

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 to the bureau charged with robbery. On seeing them, Coco-Lacour, who had long been their companion and Ultimate friend, was apparently overpowered with indignation; he rose and apostrophized Dorlé in these terms.

. Well, sir, what are you still incorrigible?

. I do not understand you, M. Coco, with your morality!

(in a rage.) Who do you call Coco? Learn that that name is not mine; I call myself Lacour; yes, Lacour, do you hear?

. Ah! my God! I know it too well, you are Lacour; but you have not, I dare say, forgotten that when we were comrades you had no other name but Coco, and all the friends you have call you by that name, and no other. I say, Cerf, have you ever seen a cocoa of such strength?

(shrugging his shoulders.) There are no children left, all the world is mingled, monsieur Lacour!

. It is good, good, very good, other times, other manners; castigat ridendo mores; I know that in my youth I may have committed some little venial offences, but

Lacour tried to arrange some words, in which the word honour was distinguishable; but Dorlé who was not in a humour to listen to his remonstrance, closed his mouth by recalling to him all the various times when they had worked together. A thousand times Lacour has experienced disagreeables of this kind: and if ever he reproached the robbers with their tenacity for sticking to business, his good intentions were always recompensed by similar impertinences.


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 indicating the open door of the living-room, the candle lifted shoulder-high as she studied his solemn face. She said no more until she had regulated the flame of the reading-lamp, which stood among disordered piles of books on the big library table as if a castle of them had fallen to ruin there.

"Miss McCoy cannot be seen, sir."

She seated herself, her face turned partly to the light, and looked across at Texas, unfriendly, hard, censorious.

"I am sorry, ma'am; I wished—"

"She is sick, the doctor has just left her side. She is crushed, Mr. Hartwell; her heart is broken by this great disgrace you have brought on her. You have brought it most thoughtlessly, sir, whether you are innocent or guilty of the charges which men lay to your door."

"Mrs. McCoy, ma'am—"

"A gentleman, sir, even a guilty one, would have thought twice before compromising a girl as young and unsophisticated as my daughter, by appearing in public at her side."

Hartwell was so deeply moved by her arraignment, soft-spoken, but cutting, and doubly cutting from the very refinement of her pose and speech, that he rose to his feet. He stood, tall and judicial before her, his somber coat well suited to the severe lines of his harsh, honest face.

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 soon the reports of his gun in quick succession told the doctor that the sportsman was successful.

Meantime, the doctor employed himself in overhauling the remaining contents of the car, and in establishing the equilibrium of the second balloon. There remained thirty pounds of pemmican, some tea and coffee, about a gallon and a half of brandy, an empty water-tank; all the salted meat had disappeared.

The doctor was aware that, by the loss of the hydrogen from the first balloon, his ascensional force was reduced to about 900 lbs. He must, therefore, base his calculations for the establishment of the equilibrium on this difference. The new "Victoria's" "content" was 67,000 feet of gas; the dilating apparatus appeared to be in good order, neither the pile nor the serpentine had received any injury.

The ascensional force of the new balloon was then about 3,000 lbs., and adding the weight of the apparatus, the travelers, and the water, the car and accessories, and putting on board fifty gallons of water, and 100 lbs of fresh meat, the doctor arrived at a total of 2,830 lbs. He could therefore, carry 170 lbs. of ballast for contingencies, and the balloon would then be in equilibrium with the atmospheric air.

His dispositions were made accordingly; he replaced the weight of Joe by ballast. The entire day was occupied in these preparations, and were finished when Kennedy returned. He had had good sport. He brought a quantity of geese, wild ducks, snipe, teal, and plover. He employed himself in preparing the game and smoking it. Each bird was spitted through with a small stick, and suspended above a fire of green wood. When the operation appeared complete, the whole were carefully packed within the car.

Next day the sportsman determined to complete the stock of provisions.

Evening surprised the travelers while still at work.

Their supper consisted of pemmican, biscuits, and tea. Fatigue, having given them appetite, ensured them sleep. Each during his watch peered anxiously into the darkness, sometimes almost fancying they heard the voice of Joe; but, alas! that voice they so desired to hear was far away.

At daybreak the doctor aroused Kennedy.


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 "Ma'am, I don't feel any mortification for the part I took in Miss McCoy's innocent trip to the hay-meadow after flowers, ma'am. I don't feel anything but resentment for the narrow view these pore, ornery people have taken, ma'am, for she could walk by my side for a thousand years and never have cause to blush or turn her face away."

"A Tittle thought beforehand would have been much better than a great deal of declamation afterwards, Mr. Hartwell. You are a disgraced man in this community, sir; you are charged with the betrayal of a sacred trust, and you have not refuted it."

"I'll do it, ma'am, to the satisfaction of everybody. I came here to-night to tell you-all about something that I've found out, ma'am."

"Your private affairs are of no interest to my daughter or to me, sir."

"Since I have been the cause of so much distress—"

"The kindest thing you can do, sir, will be to leave Cottonwood at once, and carry your unfortunate taint with you."

"I can't leave under a taint, Mrs. McCoy. I have matters to adjust here when a certain man returns."

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 that she looked up at him with a quick and frightened start.

"Killing men, Mr. Hartwell, never will clear you of the charge that stands against you, nor wipe away the disgrace that has come to this house through you. For Heaven's sake, go—leave Cottonwood—without making any more trouble!"

Texas was hurt to the marrow by her unwillingness to believe him, by her harping on the one string of his taint, and the sorrow that had come from it to her door. He felt that there was no use in going into the matter of Henry Stott's connection with his unfortunate entanglement, no profit in remaining there another minute in fruitless attempt to place himself in a more favorable light. Perhaps if Sallie had been there it would have been different. But Sallie was tossing that moment on her bed, burning in the fever of the first shame that ever had come into her life.

"You are a man of violence, Mr. Hartwell, you came into my daughter's notice by a violent deed. What can an outcast man, such as your doings in this country have made you, hope to gain by further violence? Surely not vindication!"

"It's guilty folks that talk of vindication, mainly, ma'am. I want justice."

"And my poor daughter—who will give her justice?"

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 "I thought of waitin' on the school-board, or at least a part of them, ma'am."

The proposal alarmed Mrs. McCoy. She exclaimed sharply against it, starting to her feet, confronting him with panic in her eyes.

"It would only make it worse! No, no! The kindest deed you can do will be to leave Cottonwood at once."

"If I could bring peace back to Miss McCoy by going, ma'am—"

"We might be able to fix matters up—I might get her place back for her, if you were out of the way."

Texas stood a little while, his head bowed, the weight of his contemplation heavy upon him.

"But I can't leave for a few days," he said, his voice scarcely above his breath, as if he communed with himself. Then frankly to her: "I'll not promise you to leave, Mrs. McCoy, proud as I'd be to oblige you. I've set out to clear myself before these cattlemen, and I'm a going to do it. When it's done, and you folks get your eyes open and see me right, I'll bid you fare-you-well."

"It was an unfortunate wind that blew you here."

"Ma'am, it was so. If it wasn't for Uncle Boley—"

"That poor, simple old man! Do you want to

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 ruin him, too—don't you know he must suffer ruin if you keep on hanging around him?"

"I've discussed that with him, ma'am. His heart's too big for the little house he lives in, ma'am; he's a gentleman from the ground up."

"Don't bring disaster to him in his old age, then. His business will suffer the minute the cattlemen hear he's standing up for you, the poor old simpleton!"

"Good night, ma'am," said Texas shortly, starting for the door.

He was affronted by her interpretation of Uncle Boley's loyalty to him. Simpleton, indeed! If she could have seen that old man's face when he came back from Stott's bank—but it was useless to burn himself out with such thoughts. He stopped in the hall and faced her solemnly.

"Mrs. McCoy, you'd have been further disgraced through me if it hadn't been for Uncle Boley," he said.

"Sir?"

"It was at Uncle Boley's hint that I waited till after dark to come here and see you and try to fetch a little comfort and cheer to you and Miss McCoy, ma'am. If it hadn't been for him I'd 'a' rushed off up here in broad daylight. And I never was a man that shunned the light of day before in my life.

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 I'll seek you no more, and trouble you no more. If there's any seekin' to be done, ma'am, it will come from the other side."

"If either my daughter or I need you, Mr. Hartwell, we'll call you," said she, with polite contempt. She opened the door. "Good-night, sir, and good-by."

Texas left that house with a feeling that he never had carried away from a house before in his life—a feeling of chastisement, of blame. Truly, he was an outcast in Cottonwood and the Arkansas Valley range, hopeless of ever setting things right. Perhaps it would be best for everybody but himself if he would leave Cottonwood at once, as Mrs. McCoy had suggested.

With him out of the way the sky would clear immediately for Sallie. Her discharge had been a stroke by Stott to get him out of the country, and doubtless the hint had been conveyed to her mother that all would be forgotten if he would leave Cottonwood, never to return. Stott was uncomfortable with him there. It had been Stott's intention to leave him bound in the thicket by Clear Creek until he perished, and he never had expected to see him back in Cottonwood with his dangerous secret.

And there was Uncle Boley, defiant, bold, courting the displeasure of his patrons every hour. Mrs. McCoy had spoken truly; his hanging on under the

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 protection of the old man would mean the ruin of his business. All considered, perhaps it would be the bravest, the wisest, and the best thing to do to pick up and leave that night.

But the story of his treason would follow him as far as men rode after cattle, along with the disgrace of having fled under Dee Winch's threat. He might leave present trouble, and clear the atmosphere for those behind him, but he would walk out into deeper disgrace himself. He would be like a man with an untried indictment against him on some hideous charge, the knowledge of which would cause men to shun him like a leper.

He was all but isolated by his trouble, and his final conclusion was, as he pondered the situation, that running away would not brighten his surroundings. It bore on him with oppression, like an old sorrow, or a family wrong which honor demanded him to avenge, but some insuperable obstacle made impossible to effect. Added to this was the melancholy that had steeped him like a fog since the message came from Winch. There was a brand on him, and a taint which the wind carried abroad. He was a listening man.

It was in such bitterness of mind that he came past Ollie Noggle's shop, and crossed the barber's way as he turned from locking his front door. It was a late and quiet hour for the business block of

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 Cottonwood, and the street was empty at that moment, but Noggle looked round him with what appeared to be an apprehensive sweep before speaking to Hartwell, who had paused waiting the barber's approach.

Hartwell thought he was exploring around for sight of his dreaded enemy, Zeb Smith. Noggle, he noticed, was armed with a revolver that looked rather small in comparison with his length of limb. He kept putting back the skirt of his seersucker coat to show the weapon, which had a mother-ofpearl handle, and was slung in a holster of patent leather.

"Hi're y'u?" said Noggle, still turning his look up and down the street, an air of abstraction and uneasiness about him altogether strange.

"Middlin'," Texas replied. "Was you headin' for home?"

"Ye-es," allowed the barber, standing with his revolver showing under the street light, looking this way and that, his mind plainly not on his answer.

"I'm headin' down that di-rection," said Texas.

Noggle did not make any move to fall in for the march to Malvina's embrace. He stood teetering on his long legs like some kind of insect stuck in glue, watching around him with an air of suspicion and fear that spoke little for his confidence in his gun.

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