is hope fer the good as he was terrible in his dealin'
with the bad. I never saw his like.... He loved you, Collie, better
than you ever knew. Better than Jack, or Wils, or me! You know what the
Bible says about him who gives his life fer his friend. Wal, Wade was my
friend, an' Jack's, only we never could see!... An' he was Wils's
friend. An' to you he must have been more than words can tell.... We all
know what child's play it would have been fer Wade to kill Jack without
bein' hurt himself. But he wouldn't do it. So he spared me an' Jack, an'
I reckon himself. Somehow he made Jack fight an' die like a man. God
only knows how he did that. But it saved me from--from hell--an' you an'
Wils from misery.... Wade could have taken you from me an' Jack. He had
only to tell you his secret, an' he wouldn't. He saw how you loved me,
as if you were my real child.... But. Collie, lass, it was _he_ who was
your father!"

With bursting heart Columbine fell upon her knees beside that cold,
still form.

Belllounds softly left the room and closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER XX

Nature was prodigal with her colors that autumn. The frosts came late,
so that the leaves did not gradually change their green. One day, as if
by magic, there was gold among the green, and in another there was
purple and red. Then the hilltops blazed with their crowns of aspen
groves; and the slopes of sage shone mellow gray in the sunlight; and
the vines on the stone fences straggled away in lines of bronze; and the
patches of ferns under the cliffs faded fast; and the great rock slides
and black-timbered reaches stood out in their somber shades.

Columbines bloomed in all the dells among the spruces, beautiful stalks
with heavy blossoms, the sweetest and palest of blue-white flowers.
Motionless they lifted their faces to the light. Out in the aspen
groves, where the grass was turning gold, the columbines blew gracefully
in the wind, nodding and swaying. The most exquisite and finest of these
columbines hid in the shaded nooks, star-sweet in the silent gloom of
the woods.

Wade's last few whispered words to Moore had been interpreted that the
hunter desired to be buried among the columbines in the aspen grove on
the slope above Sage Valley. Here, then, had been made his grave.

* * * * *

One day Belllounds sent Columbine to fetch Moore down to White Slides.
It was a warm, Indian-summer afternoon, and the old ranch