ribing in detail the attack on the train and the
measures taken for the capture of the marauders, Anderson listening in
silence. The affair had taken place early that morning, but the
telegraph wires had been cut in several places on both sides of the
damaged line, so that no precise news of what had happened had reached
either Vancouver on the west, or Golden on the east, till the afternoon.
The whole countryside was now in movement, and a vigorous man-hunt was
proceeding on both sides of the line.

"There is no doubt the whole thing was planned by a couple of men from
Montana, one of whom was certainly concerned in the hold-up there a few
months ago and got clean away. But there were six or seven of them
altogether and most of the rest--we suspect--from this side of the
boundary. The old man who was killed"--Anderson raised his eyes abruptly
to the speaker--"seems to have come from Nevada. There were some
cuttings from a Nevada newspaper found upon him, besides the envelope
addressed to you, of which I sent you word at Roger's Pass. Could you
recognise anything in my description of the man? There was one thing I
forgot to say. He had evidently been in the doctor's hands lately. There
is a surgical bandage on the right ankle."

"Was there nothing in the envelope?" asked Anderson, putting the
question aside, in spite of the evident eagerness of the questioner.

"Nothing."

"And where is it?"

"It was given to the Kamloops coroner, who has just arrived." Anderson
said nothing more. They had reached the shed, which his companion
unlocked. Inside were two rough tables on trestles and lying on them two
sheeted forms.

Dixon uncovered the first, and Anderson looked steadily down at the face
underneath. Death had wrought its strange ironic miracle once more, and
out of the face of an outcast had made the face of a sage. There was
little disfigurement; the eyes were closed with dignity; the mouth
seemed to have unlearnt its coarseness. Silently the tension of
Anderson's inner being gave way; he was conscious of a passionate
acceptance of the mere stillness and dumbness of death.

"Where was the wound?" he asked, stooping over the body.

"Ah, that was the strange thing! He didn't die of his wound at all! It
was a mere graze on the arm." The Superintendent pointed to a rent on
the coat-sleeve. "He died of something quite different--perhaps
excitement and a weak heart. There may have to be a post-mortem."

"I doubt whe