out to
her lilac thicket and wept till dawn. She heard Adrian Brownwell go,
but she could not face him, and listened as his footsteps died away,
and he passed from her life.

And John Barclay kept vigil for the dead with her. As he tossed in his
bed through the night, he seemed to see glowing out of the darkness
before him the words Hendricks had written, in the letter that Dolan
gave Barclay at midnight. Sometimes the farewell came to him:--

"It is not this man of millions that I wish to be with a moment
to-night, John--but the boy I knew in the old days--the boy who ran
with me through the woods at Wilson's Creek, the boy who rode over the
hill into the world with me that September day forty years ago; the
boy whose face used to beam eagerly out of yours when you sat playing
at your old melodeon. I wish to be near him a little while to-night.
When you get this, can't you go to your great organ and play him back
into consciousness and tell him Bob says good-by?"

At dawn Barclay called Bemis out of bed, and before sunrise he and
Barclay were walking on the terrace in front of the Barclay home.

"Lige," began Barclay, "did you tell Adrian of that note last night?"
Bemis grinned his assent.

"And he went home, found Bob there conferring with Mrs. Brownwell
about his position in the matter, and Adrian killed him."

"That's the way I figured it out myself," replied Bemis, laconically,
"but it's not my business to say so."

"I thought you promised me you would just bluff with that note and not
go so far, Lige Bemis," said Barclay.

"Did he just bluff with me when he called me a boodler and threw me
downstairs in the county convention?"

"Then you lied to me, sir," snapped Barclay.

"Oh, hell, John--come off," sneered Bemis. "Haven't I got a right to
lie to you if I want to?"

The two men stared at each other like growling dogs for a moment, and
then Barclay turned away with, "What is there in the typhoid talk?"

"Demagogery--that's all. Of course there may be typhoid in the water;
but let 'em boil the water."

"But they won't."

"Well, then, if they eat too much of your 'Old Honesty' or drink too
much of my water unboiled, they take their own risk. You don't make a
breakfast food for hogs, and I can't run my water plant for fools."

"But, Lige," protested Barclay, "couldn't we hitch up the electric
plant--"

"Hitch up the devil and Tom Walker, John Barclay. When the wolves got
after you, did I come blu