logical end. He
knew, only too well, all that Jeff had suffered since the moment of
that gruesome discovery in the Cathills valley. It had been no figure
of speech when Jeff had described his twin brother as part of himself.
The shock the man had received was, to Bud's mind, as though his heart
had been torn asunder. Hanged as a cattle thief! Was there anything
more dire, more terrible in the imagination of man than to suddenly
find that his well-loved brother, twin body of his own, was a cattle
thief, possibly a murderer, and had been hanged by his fellow-men? It
was a thought to leave the simple Bud staggered. And for the victim of
the shock it might well mean the mental breaking point.

Jeff was fighting out his battle with an almost super-human courage.
Bud knew that. It was written in every detail of his attitude. In the
straining of his blue eyes, in the deep knitting of his fair strong
brows, in the painful lines ploughing deeper and deeper about his
mouth, and the set of his strong jaws.

No. There was no thought of breaking in upon the boy's black moments
of suffering. He must fight his own battle now, once and for all.
When victory had been achieved, then perhaps his sympathy might become
helpful. But till then nothing but the necessities of their journey
must be allowed to intrude between them.

So they rode over the southern trail. The noontide sun scorched the
parching earth with a blistering heat, drinking up the last moisture
which the tall prairie grass sought to secrete at its attenuated roots.
The world about them was unchanged. Every scene was similar in its
characteristics to all that which had become their lives. Yet Bud knew
that for one of them, at least, the whole of life, and everything
pertaining to it, had been completely and terribly distorted.

But the character of Jeffrey Masters was stronger and fiercer than Bud
knew. For all his suffering there was no yielding in him. There had
been moments when his soul had cried out in agony. There had been
moments when the hideousness of his weak brother's fall had driven him
to the verge of madness. But with each yielding to suffering had come
a rally of passionate force that would not be overborne, and gradually
mastery supervened.

Ten miles out of Orrville on the homeward journey Bud received his
first intimation that the battle was waning. It came almost as a
shock. They had passed a long stretch of flat grass-land, and w