d father of his'n, just once, sir; I'd glad go to Hell if I
could only meet them first. If she is waitin' for him down there,
he'll come; he'll sure come. Hell couldn't hold him against such
as that, and when he comes--"

Unconsciously, as he spoke the last sentences, the giant's voice
took a tone of terrible meaning, and he slowly rose from his seat.
When he uttered the last word he was standing erect, his muscles
tense, his powerful frame shaken with passion.

There was an inarticulate cry of horror, as the mountaineer's
guest started to his feet. A moment he stood, then sank back into
his chair, a cowering, shivering heap.

Long into the night, the stranger walked the floor of his little
room under the roof, his face drawn and white, whispering half
aloud things that would have startled his unsuspecting host. "MY
boy--MY boy--MINE! To do such a thing as that! Howard--Howard. O
Christ! that I should live to be glad that you are dead! And that
picture! His masterpiece, the picture that made his fame, the
picture he would never part with, and that we could never find! I
see it all now! Just God, what a thing to carry on one's soul!"

Once he paused to stand at the window, looking down upon the
valley. The moon had climbed high above the mountain, but beneath
the flood of silver light the shadows lay dark and deep in Mutton
Hollow. Then as he stood there, from out the shadowy gloom, came
the wild, weird song they had heard the evening before. The man at
the window groaned. The song sank to a low, moaning wail, and he
seemed to hear again the wind in the pine above the grave of the
murdered girl. She was calling, calling--would he come back? Back
from the grave, could he come? The words of the giant mountaineer
seemed burned into the father's brain; Hell couldn't hold him
against such as that.

Then the man with the proud face, the face of a scholar and poet,
drew back from the window, shaking with a fear he could not
control. He crept into a corner and crouched upon the floor. With
wide eyes, he stared into the dark. He prayed.

And this is how it came about that the stranger, who followed the
Old Trail along the higher sunlit ground, followed, also, the
other trail down into the valley where the gloomy shadows are;
there to live at the ranch near the haunted cabin--the shepherd of
Mutton Hollow.

CHAPTER VII.

WHAT IS LOVE?

Sammy Lane rode very slowly on her way home from the Matthews
place that