ut of America," he said,
"leaving the clear, sweet air of liberty behind."

He was near to the poet at the moment, for he was also the lover. His
allegiance to the great republic stood the test. His faith in democracy
was shaken, but not destroyed. "I will wait," he decided. "This shall be
the sign. If this deed goes unavenged, then will I put off my badge and my
uniform, and go back to the land where for a hundred years at least such
deeds as these have been impossible."

He built a fire, as night fell, to serve both as beacon and as a defence
against the cold. He felt himself weirdly remote in this vigil. From his
far height he looked abroad upon the tumbled plain as if upon an ocean
dimly perceptible yet august. "At this moment," he said, "curious and
perhaps guilty eyes are wondering what my spark of firelight may mean."

His mind went again and again to that tall old man in the ditch. What was
the meaning of his scared and sorrowful glance? Why should one so
peacefully employed at such a time and in such a place wear the look of a
hunted deer? What meant the tremor in his voice?

Was it possible that one so gentle should have taken part in this deed?
"Preposterous suspicion, and yet he had a guilty look."

He was not a believer in ghosts, but he came nearer to a fear of the dark
that night than ever before in his life. He brought his horse close to the
fire for company, and was careful not to turn his back upon the dead. A
corpse lying peacefully would not have produced this overpowering horror.
He had seen battle-fields, but this pile of mangled limbs conquered even
the hardened campaigner. He shivered each time his memory went back to
what he had first looked upon--the charred hand, the helpless heel.

From his high hill of meditation he reviewed the history of the West.
Based in bloody wars between the primitive races, and between the trappers
and their allies, the land had passed through a thin adumbration of
civilization as the stockmen drove out the buffalo and their hunters.
Vigilantes, sheriff's posses (and now and again the regular army) had
swept over these grassy swells on errands of retributory violence, and so
the territory had been divided at last into populous States. Then
politics, the great national game, had made of them a power, with Senators
to represent a mere handful of miners and herdsmen. In the Congress of the
United States these commonwealths had played their unscrupulous games,
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