o
whether he realized that his description tallied closely with the
appearance of the deceased, Sandy said that that all might be, but still
"this isn't Foster." Questioned as to whether, if the deceased were
again to have the color and action,--the life that Foster had a year
ago,--might not the resemblance to Foster be complete?--Sandy simply
"couldn't tell."

Nearly an hour was consumed in trying to convince him he must, or at
least might, be mistaken, but to no purpose. He mentioned a card
photograph of Foster in ranch costume that would convince the gentlemen,
he thought, that there was no such very strong resemblance, and a note
was written to Miss Porter asking her to find and send the picture in
question. It came, a cabinet photo of a tall, slender, well-built young
fellow with dark eyes and brows and thick, curving lashes and oval,
attractive face, despite its boyishness, and nine men out of ten who saw
and compared it with the face of the dead declared it looked as though
it had been taken for the latter perhaps a year or so agone. Ray had
hurt his own case, and, when excused to return to his sister's side,
went forth into the gathering twilight stricken with the consciousness
that he was believed to have lied in hopes of averting scandal from that
sister's name.

And on the morrow with that _post-mortem_, so insisted on by Brick, no
longer delayed, the dead again lay mutely awaiting the final action of
the civil-military authorities, and to the surprise of the officers and
guards, before going to the daily routine that kept him from early morn
till late at night in his beleaguered office, Drayton came and bowed his
gray head and gazed with sombre eyes into the sleeping features now
before him.

A pinched and tired look was coming over the waxen face that had been so
calm and placid, as though in utter weariness over this senseless delay.
Drayton had been told of young Ray's almost astounding declaration, and
officers of the law half expected him to make some adverse comment
thereon, but he did not. Alert correspondents, amazed to see the corps
commander at such a place and so far from the Ayuntamiento, surrounded
him as he would have retaken his seat in his carriage, and clamored for
something as coming from him in the way of an expression of opinion,
which, with grave courtesy, the general declined to give, but could not
prevent appearing a week later in a thousand papers and in a dozen
different forms--