her
clothes. When she stood up, her muscles screamed protestingly. She
looked out into the yard and saw that the light in the windmill was
still burning.

She went to Mac's bedroom, expecting to find him sprawled out across
his bed. But his bed had not been slept in. Downstairs she expected to
find him, head in hands, asleep at the kitchen table. But he was not
there and the shotgun was not in its place on the wall.

She found the gun on the doorstep. But Mac wasn't in sight. Dobie came
up to her and nuzzled her hands.

"Where is he Dobie?" she asked. "Where's Mac?"

Dobie turned and trotted before her, looking back at her as if to say,
"This is the way."

She found Mac behind the barn.

He was alive, but in a state of shock, moaning in pain and fear.

His right hand was missing. Severed neatly at the wrist.

THE END.

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