is saddle. It crept to and fro across the side of the opposite
mountain as he threaded its endless zigzags and finally disappeared over
the brow into the invisible canyons beyond.

With the disappearance of this beacon came lassitude and sleep, through
whose hazy atmosphere floated wild sentences from the sick tent, which
showed that the patient was back again in Nevada, quarreling over
the price of a horse which was to carry him beyond the reach of some
threatening avalanche.

When next morning I came to depart, the doctor took me by both hands and
looked me straight in the eyes.

"You heard," he said.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I can tell a satisfied man when I see him," he growled, throwing
down my hands with that same humorous twinkle in his eyes which had
encouraged me from the first.

I made no answer, but I shall remember the lesson.

One detail more. When I stared on my own descent I found why the
leggings, with which I had been provided, were so indispensable. I was
not allowed to ride; indeed, riding down those steep declivities was
impossible. No horse could preserve his balance with a rider on his
back. I slid, so did my horse, and only in the valley beneath did we
come together again.

VIII. ARREST

The success of this interview provoked other attempts on the part of the
reporters who now flocked into the Southwest. Ere long particulars began
to pour in of Mr. Fairbrother's painful journey south, after his illness
set in. The clerk of the hotel in El Moro, where the great mine-owner's
name was found registered at the time of the murder, told a story
which made very good reading for those who were more interested in the
sufferings and experiences of the millionaire husband of the murdered
lady than in those of the unhappy but comparatively insignificant man
upon whom public opinion had cast the odium of her death.

It seems that when the first news came of the great crime which had
taken place in New York, Mr. Fairbrother was absent from the hotel on a
prospecting tour through the adjacent mountains. Couriers had been sent
after him, and it was one of these who finally brought him into town.
He had been found wandering alone on horseback among the defiles of an
untraveled region, sick and almost incoherent from fever. Indeed, his
condition was such that neither the courier nor such others as saw him
had the heart to tell him the dreadful news from New York, or even to
show him the pape