t is awful--awful!" He put his hands
to his face, and his body shook with convulsive sobs.

McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. "You were too soft for the job," said
he. "You are the wrong sort for such work."

"I had a conscience and a religion; but they made me a criminal among
them. I was chosen for a job. If I backed down I knew well what would
come to me. Maybe I'm a coward. Maybe it's the thought of my poor
little woman and the children that makes me one. Anyhow I went. I guess
it will haunt me forever.

"It was a lonely house, twenty miles from here, over the range yonder.
I was told off for the door, same as you were last night. They could
not trust me with the job. The others went in. When they came out their
hands were crimson to the wrists. As we turned away a child was
screaming out of the house behind us. It was a boy of five who had seen
his father murdered. I nearly fainted with the horror of it, and yet I
had to keep a bold and smiling face; for well I knew that if I did not
it would be out of my house that they would come next with their bloody
hands and it would be my little Fred that would be screaming for his
father.

"But I was a criminal then, part sharer in a murder, lost forever in
this world, and lost also in the next. I am a good Catholic; but the
priest would have no word with me when he heard I was a Scowrer, and I
am excommunicated from my faith. That's how it stands with me. And I
see you going down the same road, and I ask you what the end is to be.
Are you ready to be a cold-blooded murderer also, or can we do anything
to stop it?"

"What would you do?" asked McMurdo abruptly. "You would not inform?"

"God forbid!" cried Morris. "Sure, the very thought would cost me my
life."

"That's well," said McMurdo. "I'm thinking that you are a weak man and
that you make too much of the matter."

"Too much! Wait till you have lived here longer. Look down the valley!
See the cloud of a hundred chimneys that overshadows it! I tell you
that the cloud of murder hangs thicker and lower than that over the
heads of the people. It is the Valley of Fear, the Valley of Death. The
terror is in the hearts of the people from the dusk to the dawn. Wait,
young man, and you will learn for yourself."

"Well, I'll let you know what I think when I have seen more," said
McMurdo carelessly. "What is very clear is that you are not the man for
the place, and that the sooner you sell out--if you only get a dime a
d