heavens,
seemed to touch it with the tender grace and hushed repose of a tomb.
It was with something of this feeling that the Right Bower softly
pushed open the door; it was with something of this dread that the two
others lingered on the threshold, until the Right Bower, after vainly
trying to stir the dead embers on the hearth into life with his foot,
struck a match and lit their solitary candle. Its flickering light
revealed the familiar interior unchanged in aught but one thing. The
bunk that the Old Man had occupied was stripped of its blankets; the
few cheap ornaments and photographs were gone; the rude poverty of the
bare boards and scant pallet looked up at them unrelieved by the bright
face and gracious youth that had once made them tolerable. In the grim
irony of that exposure, their own penury was doubly conscious. The
little knapsack, the tea-cup and coffee-pot that had hung near his bed,
were gone also. The most indignant protest, the most pathetic of the
letters he had composed and rejected, whose torn fragments still
littered the floor, could never have spoken with the eloquence of this
empty space! The men exchanged no words; the solitude of the cabin,
instead of drawing them together, seemed to isolate each one in selfish
distrust of the others. Even the unthinking garrulity of Union Mills
and the Judge was checked. A moment later, when the Left Bower entered
the cabin, his presence was scarcely noticed.

The silence was broken by a joyous exclamation from the Judge. He had
discovered the Old Man's rifle in the corner, where it had been at
first overlooked. "He ain't gone yet, gentlemen--for yer's his rifle,"
he broke in, with a feverish return of volubility, and a high excited
falsetto. "He wouldn't have left this behind. No! I knowed it from the
first. He's just outside a bit, foraging for wood and water. No, sir!
Coming along here I said to Union Mills--didn't I?--'Bet your life the
Old Man's not far off, even if he ain't in the cabin.' Why, the moment
I stepped foot"--

"And I said coming along," interrupted Union Mills, with equally
reviving mendacity, 'Like as not he's hangin' round yer and lyin' low
just to give us a surprise.' He! ho!"

"He's gone for good, and he left that rifle here on purpose," said the
Left Bower in a low voice, taking the weapon almost tenderly in his
hands.

"Drop it, then!" said the Right Bower. The voice was that of his
brother, but suddenly changed with passion. T