ded form.

Shefford saw a sharp, cold, ghastly face. "WAGGONER!" he whispered.

"Yes," replied Lake.

Waggoner! Shefford remembered the strange power in his face, and, now
that life had gone, that power was stripped of all disguise. Death, in
Shefford's years of ministry, had lain under his gaze many times and in
a multiplicity of aspects, but never before had he seen it stamped so
strangely. Shefford did not need to be told that here was a man who
believed he had conversed with God on earth, who believed he had a
divine right to rule women, who had a will that would not yield itself
to death utterly. Waggoner, then, was the devil who had come masked to
Surprise Valley, had forced a martyrdom upon Fay Larkin. And this was
the Mormon who had made Fay Larkin a murderess. Shefford had hated
him living, and now he hated him dead. Death here was robbed of all
nobility, of pathos, of majesty. It was only retribution. Wild justice!
But alas! that it had to be meted out by a white-soled girl whose
innocence was as great as the unconscious savagery which she had
assimilated from her lonely and wild environment. Shefford laid a
despairing curse upon his own head, and a terrible remorse knocked at
his heart. He had left her alone, this girl in whom love had made the
great change--like a coward he had left her alone. That curse he visited
upon himself because he had been the spirit and the motive of this wild
justice, and his should have been the deed.

Joe Lake touched Shefford's arm and pointed at the haft of a knife
protruding from Waggoner's breast. It was a wooden haft. Shefford had
seen it before somewhere.

Then he was struck with what perhaps Joe meant him to see--the singular
impression the haft gave of one sweeping, accurate, powerful stroke. A
strong arm had driven that blade home. The haft was sunk deep; there was
a little depression in the cloth; no blood showed; and the weapon looked
as if it could not be pulled out. Shefford's thought went fatally and
irresistibly to Fay Larkin's strong arm. He saw her flash that white arm
and lift the heavy bucket from the spring with an ease he wondered at.
He felt the strong clasp of her hand as she had given it to him in a
flying leap across a crevice upon the walls. Yes, her fine hand and the
round, strong arm possessed the strength to have given that blade
its singular directness and force. The marvel was not in the physical
action. It hid inscrutably in the mystery of dea