a different sphere of life, was rich beyond
counting, and had been early nurtured in quiet Christian surroundings.
The spirit of ambition, rivalry, and the methods of a degenerate and
cruel finance had seized him, mastered him; so that, under the cloak
of power--as a toreador hides the blade under the red cloth before his
enemy the toro--he held a sword of capital which did cruel and vicious
things, at last becoming criminal also. Henderley had incited and paid;
the others, Dupont and Lygon, had acted and received. Henderley had had
no remorse, none at any rate that weighed upon him; for he had got used
to ruining rivals, and seeing strong men go down, and those who had
fought him come to beg or borrow of him in the end. He had seen more
than one commit suicide, and those they loved go down and farther down,
and he had helped these up a little, but not enough to put them near his
own plane again; and he could not see--it never occurred to him--that he
had done any evil to them. Dupont thought upon his crimes now and then,
and his heart hardened, for he had no moral feeling; Henderley did
not think at all. It was left to the man of the reedy lake to pay the
penalty of apprehension, to suffer the effects of crime upon a nature
not naturally criminal.

Again and again, how many hundreds of times, had Roger Lygon seen in
his sleep--had even seen awake so did hallucination possess him--the new
cattle trail he had fired for scores of miles. The fire had destroyed
the grass over millions of acres, two houses had been burned and three
people had lost their lives; all to satisfy the savage desire of one
man, to destroy the chance of a cattle trade over a great section of
country for the railway which was to compete with his own--an act which,
in the end, was futile, failed of its purpose. Dupont and Lygon had been
paid their price, and had disappeared, and been forgotten--they were but
pawns in his game--and there was no proof against Henderley. Henderley
had forgotten. Lygon wished to forget, but Dupont remembered, and meant
now to reap fresh profit by the remembrance.

Dupont was coming to-night, and the hatchet of crime was to be dug up
again. So it had been planned. As the shadows fell, Lygon roused himself
from his trance with a shiver. It was not cold, but in him there was a
nervous agitation, making him cold from head to foot; his body seemed
as impoverished as his mind. Looking with heavy-lidded eyes across the
prairie,