ller than his companions, reached out and raised
the latch. The door swung open. He paused again. Then he stepped across
the threshold.

The new-born day cast a gray twilight over the interior. The man sniffed,
like a beast of prey scenting the trail of blood. And that which came to
his nostrils seemed to satisfy him, for he passed within and strode to the
bedside. He stood for a few moments gazing down at the figures of a man
and a woman locked in each other's arms.

He looked long and earnestly upon the calm features of the faces so
closely pressed together. There was no pity, no remorse in his heart, for
life and death were matters which touched him not at all. War was as the
breath of his nostrils.

Presently he moved away. There was nothing to keep him there. These two
had passed together to the shores of the Happy Hunting Ground. They had
lived and died together. They would--perhaps--awake together. But not on
the prairies of the West.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE CAPITULATION

"I'd like to know how it's all going to end."

Mrs. Rickards drew a deep sigh of perplexity and looked helplessly over at
Ma, who was placidly knitting at her husband's bedside. The farmwife's
bright face had lost nothing of its comeliness in spite of the anxieties
through which she had so recently passed. Her twinkling eyes shone
cheerily through her glasses, and the ruddy freshness of her complexion
was still fair to see. A line or two, perhaps, had deepened about her
mouth, and the grayness of her hair may have become a shade whiter. But
these things were hardly noticeable.

The change in Rosebud's aunt was far more pronounced. She had taken to
herself something of the atmosphere of the plains-folk in the few weeks of
her stay at the farm. And the subtle change had improved her.

Rube was mending fast, and the two older women now spent all their spare
time in his company.

Ma looked up from her work.

"Rube an' me have been discussin' it," she said. "Guess we've settled to
leave the farm, an' buy a new place around some big city. I don't rightly
know how the boy 'll take it. Y' see, Seth's mighty hard to change, an'
he's kind o' fixed on this place. Y' see, he's young, an' Rube an' me's
had a longish spell. We'd be pleased to take it easy now. Eh, old man?"

Ma glanced affectionately at the mighty figure filling up the bed. The man
nodded.

"Y' see, things don't seem hard till you see your old man's blood
runnin'," she w