begin next
day-perhaps that very night-and Crump would guide the soldiers. Now he
must go, and go quickly. The boy, too, sent word that unless Rome went,
he would have something to tell. Old Gabe saw no significance in the
message; but he had promised to deliver it, and he did. Rome wavered
then; Steve and himself gone, no suspicion would fall on the lad. If he
were caught, the boy might confess. With silence Rome gave assent, and
the two parted in an apathy that was like heartlessness. Only old Gabe's
shrunken breast heaved with something more than weariness of descent,
and Rome stood watching him a long time before he turned back to the
cave that had sheltered him from his enemies among beasts and men. In
a moment he came out for the last time, and turned the opposite way.
Climbing about the spur, he made for the path that led down to the
river. When he reached it he glanced at the sun, and stopped in
indecision. Straight above him was a knoll, massed with rhododendrons,
the flashing leaves of which made it like a great sea-wave in the
slanting sun, while the blooms broke slowly down over it like foam.
Above this was a gray sepulchre of dead, standing trees, more gaunt and
spectre-like than ever, with the rich life of summer about it. Higher
still were a dark belt of stunted firs and the sandstone ledge, and
above these-home. He was risking his liberty, his life. Any clump of
bushes might bristle suddenly with Winchesters. If the soldiers sought
for him at the cave they would at the same time guard the mountain
paths; they would guard, too, the Stetson cabin. But no matter-the sun
was still high, and he turned up the steep. The ledge passed, he stopped
with a curse at his lips and the pain of a knife-thrust at his heart.
A heap of blackened stones and ashes was before him. The wild
mountain-grass was growing up about it. The bee-gums were overturned and
rifled. The garden was a tangled mass of weeds. The graves in the little
family burying-ground were unprotected, the fence was gone, and no
boards marked the last two ragged mounds. Old Gabe had never told him.
He, too, like Martha, was homeless, and the old miller had been kind to
him, as the girl's kinspeople had been to her.

For a long while he sat on the remnant of the burned and broken fence,
and once more the old tide of bitterness rose within him and ebbed away.
There were none left to hate, to wreak vengeance on. It was hard to
leave the ruins as they were; a