at knowledge did I possess that had
not been equally done and known by any chance visitor to the ranch? I
remembered the notes in my shirt pocket; and, at the risk of awakening
some of my comrades, I lit a candle and studied them. They were
undoubtedly written by the same hand. To whom had the other been
smuggled? and by what means had it come into Old Man Hooper's
possession? The answer hit me so suddenly, and seemed intrinsically so
absurd, that I blew out the candle and lay again on my back to study it.

And the more I studied it, the less absurd it seemed, not by the light
of reason, but by the feeling of pure intuition. I knew it as sanely as
I knew that the moon made that patch of light through the window. The
man to whom that other note had been surreptitiously conveyed by the
sad-eyed, beautiful girl of the iron-barred chamber was dead; and he was
dead because Old Man Hooper had so willed. And the former owners of the
other notes of the "Collection" concerning which the old man had spoken
were dead, too--dead for the same reason and by the same hidden hands.

Why? Because they knew about the girl? Unlikely. Without doubt Hooper
had, as in my case, himself made possible that knowledge. But I
remembered many things; and I knew that my flash of intuition, absurd as
it might seem at first sight, was true. I recalled the swift, darting
onslaughts with the fly whackers, the fierce, vindictive slaughter of
the frogs, his early-morning pursuit of the flock of migrating birds.
Especially came clear to my recollection the words spoken at breakfast:

"Everything inside the walls is mine! Mine! Mine! Understand? I will
not tolerate anything that is not mine; that does not obey my will; that
does not come when I say come; go when I say go; and fall silent when I
say be still!"

My crime, the crime of these men from whose dead hands the girl's
appeals had been taken for the "Collection," was that of curiosity! The
old man would within his own domain reign supreme, in the mental as in
the physical world. The chance cowboy, genuinely desirous only of a
resting place for the night, rode away unscathed; but he whom the old
man convicted of a prying spirit committed a lese-majesty that could not
be forgiven. And I had made many tracks during my night reconnaissance.

And the same flash of insight showed me that I would be followed
wherever I went; and the thing that convinced my intuitions--not my
reason--of this was the recol