had thus decreed it.

And then it was, in that crucial moment, that Dirke's groping soul came
out into the light,--even as the wide white flower over yonder had come
out into the light, springing from its grim, unsightly stem. In that
flashing instant of time his true nature, which he had so long sought to
belie, took final command. All that was false, fantastic, artificial,
loosed its hold and fell away. For the first time in two years Dabney
Dirke was perfectly sane.

At the word to fire, he did the one thing possible to the man he was;
his pistol flashed straight upwards.

The two shots rang out simultaneously, setting the echoes roaring among
the hills. Dirke staggered, but recovered his foothold again and stood
an instant, swaying slightly, while he slowly, with an absent look in
his face and in his eyes, drew the ring from his finger. As de Lys came
up, he dropped the trinket at his feet. Then, slowly, heavily, he sank
back, and the men gently lowered him to the ground.

De Lys knelt beside him, white with consternation.

"Monsieur!" he cried; "Monsieur! It was a misunderstanding! I mistook
you wholly! And you, you were magnanimous! Ah, _mon Dieu_!"

And then a wonder came to pass, for Dabney Dirke's lips parted in a
smile. The smile was faint, yet indescribably sweet, and the voice was
faint, and far-away, in which he murmured brokenly; "It was--a
message--to--the stars."

The horror in the faces bending over him was lost in a look of awe.
There was an influence mystically soothing in the dying man's words. The
dry, soft air played about the group, rustling the short, sparse grass.
It seemed the only motion left in a hushed and reverent world.

Then, as the smile deepened upon his face, fixed there by the hand of
death, the lips parted for the last time, and Dirke whispered; "I am
going--in--for astronomy!"

VIII.

MR. FETHERBEE'S ADVENTURE.

Mr. Fetherbee was in his element,--a fact which the casual observer
would have found it hard to believe; for he was a dapper little
gentleman, dainty in his attire and presumably fastidious as to his
surroundings, and these last were, in the present instance, hardly
calculated to suit a fastidious taste. In a word, Mr. Fetherbee was
"doing" Lame Gulch, doing it from the tourist's standpoint, delighting
in every distinctive feature of the rough-and-ready, sordid,
picturesque, "rustling" young mining-camp.

He was a popular little man, and he had been r