did ye find out?" demanded Hanway, his theory evaporating into
thin air.

"Why, as he didn't reply to my letter about a matter of such
importance"--he checked himself suddenly, then went on more
slowly--"it occurred to me that he might have decided to come, and
might have been the man who was killed. So I wrote to his brother. He
had not been expected at home earlier. His brother doesn't incline to
the foul-play theory. The horse he rode is a wild young animal that
has run away two or three times. He had been warned repeatedly against
riding that horse, but he thought him safe enough. The horse has
returned home,--got there the day my letter was received. So the
brother and an officer came and exhumed the body: he was buried, you
know, after the inquest, over in the little graveyard yonder on the
slope of the mountain."

Selwyn shivered slightly, and the fine white hands came out of the
gaudy red pockets, and fastened the frogs beneath the lapels across
his chest, to draw the smoking-jacket closer.

"Great Scott! what a fate,--to be left in that desolate
burying-ground! Death is death, there."

"Death is death anywhar," said the mountaineer gloomily.

"No. Get you a mile or two of iron fence, and stone gates, and lots of
sculptured marble angels around, and death is peace, or rest, or
heaven, or paradise, according to your creed and the taste of the
subject; but here you are done for and dead."

Hanway, in the limited experience of the mountaineer, could not follow
the theory, and he forbore to press it further.

"Well," Selwyn resumed, "they took him home, and I was glad to see him
go. I was glad to see them filling that hole up. I took a pious
interest in that. I should have felt it was waiting for me. I shoveled
some of the earth back myself."

The wind surged around the house, and shook the outer doors. The rain
trampled on the roof like a squadron of cavalry. With his fate
standing ever behind him, almost visibly looking over his shoulder,
although he saw it not, the valley man was a pathetic object to the
mountaineer. Hanway's eyes were hot and burned as he looked at him; if
he had been but a little younger, they might have held tears. But
Hanway had passed by several years his majority, and esteemed himself
exempt from boyish softness.

Selwyn shook off the impression with a shiver, and bent forward to
mend the fire.

"Where were you yesterday?" he asked, seeking a change of subject.

"At home sow