ch the Kentuckian did not seem to be seeing
for the first time.

Again under the night skies by the open grave, when the lanterns burned
yellow and the white shaft of an automobile lamp bit out a hard band of
glare, the figures of the burial party might have been effigies, but
once more the tight-drawn figure of that spare officer declared itself
human because only something human could, without word or motion, convey
such a declaration of suffering.

It was he who gave the orders, and as Boone watched the firing squad
step forward--gaunt, shadow shapes in silhouette--to fire the last
salute, he saw the details with a dazed and blunted gaze.

The sharp order which brought the pieces to shoulder; the other sharp
order, and the clean-tongued reports, single in unison but multiple in
their crimson jets--somehow these took a less biting hold on his memory
than the hint of the break in the officer's voice or the empty click of
the back-thrown breech-blocks and the light clatter of empty and falling
cartridge shells from the chambers.

It was over, and back in his bare inn room Boone sat in a heavy dulness,
alone once more, when a rap sounded on the door.

"You are Mr. Boone Wellver, sor'r, are ye not? I heard them call ye so."

With the Scotch rolling of the r's, a flood of memory came back to the
Kentuckian. This was the messenger who so long ago had come to the
mountain cabin, seeking to lure his preceptor out of his hermitage, to
China. The years had drawn him leaner and battered him, and his insignia
proclaimed him a major, but his beard and uniform had not Russianized
him.

"Major McTavish!" exclaimed the younger man, and across the older face
passed a momentary surprise, too trivial to endure long against the head
currents of graver emotion. "Yes, I am Boone Wellver. I was his
foster-son."

The veteran of forty years of soldiering stood stiff for a little while
and embarrassed. His undemonstrative nature was, just now, an ice-flow
racked by a warm and unaccustomed freshet, and his straight lip-line
twisted up, down, and up again under his effort.

"I have a message for ye, sor'r. He did not die at once--and I was with
him from the moment he was struck."

Boone closed the door and turned eagerly. He had been hungry for a
word--for a reassurance that in these last busy years this gallant
gentleman had remembered him; yet now he put another matter ahead of
that.

"But tell me first, sir, of his death," he be