as if she were there to hear
his hurt appeal.

It was for her that he felt the wound, and not for Bully Presby, her
father. For the latter he spared scant sympathy; but it was Joan who
would be stricken by any action he might take, and the action must be
taken, and would necessarily be taken publicly.

Under criminal procedure men had served long terms behind bars for
less offenses than Presby's. Others had made reparation through
payment of money, and slunk away into the shadows of disgrace to avoid
handcuffs. And the fall of Presby of the Rattler, as a plunderer, was
one that would echo widely in the mining world where he had moved, a
stalwart, unbending king. Not until then had Dick realized how high
that figure towered. Presby, the irresistible, a thief, and fighting
to keep out of the penitentiary, while Joan, the brave, the loving,
the true, cowered in her room, dreading to look the world in the
face.

And he, the man who loved her, almost accepted as her betrothed, with
the ring even then burning in his pocket, was the one who must deal
her this blow!

He got up and staggered through the darkness along the length of the
line, almost envying the miserable dynamiter, who had died above
the remnant of wall, for the quiet into which he had been thrust.
If the train bringing him homeward had been wrecked, and his life
extinguished, he could have saved her this. The Cross would have
been sold. She might have grieved for him, for a time, but wounds
will heal, unless too deep. He stood above the abyss where daylight
showed ruins, and knew that the destruction of the dam, heavy a blow
as it had seemed when inflicted, was nothing as compared to this
ruin of dreams, of love, and hope.

"Dick! Dick! What is it, boy?" came a soft voice from the night,
scarcely above a whisper. "Can't you tell me, old man? Ain't we still
pardners? Just as we uster be?"

He peered through the darkness, roused from his misery in the
stillness of the hour, and the night, by the appeal. Dimly he
discerned, seated above him on the abutment, a shape outlined against
the stars. It threw itself down with hard-striking feet, and came
toward him, and he knew it was not a phantom of misery. It came
closer to where he stood on the brink of the blackness, and laid a
hand on his shoulder, put it farther across and held him, as tenderly
as father might have held, in this hour of distress.

"I've been follerin' you, boy," the kindly voice went on.