stop, turn and lift a revolver. The
flash of the sun on the barrel and the explosion of the discharge
were simultaneous. As the red man fired, the other flung up his
arms, plunged forward on his face, gave one convulsive tremor
through all his limbs, and moved no more. The discovery, the chase
and its termination had occupied but five minutes; and while one big
man, panting from his exertions, approached only to see that his
fallen victim showed no sign of life, the other, with his face amid
the alpine flowers, remained where he had dropped, his arms
outstretched, his hands clenched, his body still, blood running from
his mouth.

The conqueror took careful note of the spot in which he stood and
bringing a knife from his pocket blazed the stem of a young tree
that rose not very far from his victim. Then he disappeared and
peace reigned above the fallen. So still he lay that another fox,
scared from its siesta, poked a black muzzle round a rock and
sniffed the air; but it trusted not appearances and having
contemplated the recumbent object lifted its head, uttered a dubious
bark and trotted away. From on high an eagle also marked the fallen
man, but swiftly soared upward to the crown of the mountain and
disappeared. The spot was lonely enough, yet a track ran within one
hundred yards and it often happened that charcoal burners and their
mules passed that way to the valleys.

None, however, came now as the sun turned westward and the cool
shadow of the precipice began to creep over the little wilderness at
its feet. Many hours passed and then, after night had flooded the
hollow, there sounded from close at hand strange noises and the
intermittent thud of some metal weapon striking the earth. The din
ascended from a rock which lifted its grey head above a thicket of
juniper; and here, while the flat summit of the boulder began to
shine whitely under the rising moon, a lantern flickered and showed
two shadows busy above the excavation of an oblong hole. They
mumbled together and dug in turn. Then one dark figure came out into
the open, took his bearings, flung lantern light on the blazed tree
trunk, and advanced to a brown, motionless hump lying hard by.

Infinite silence reigned over that uplifted region. Above, near the
summit of the mountain, flashed the red eye of a charcoal burner's
fire; beneath only the plateau sloped to a ragged edge easterly, for
the lake was hidden under the shoulder of the hills. No firefly
d