g to be quiet: else I'll pump
some lead into him and, dog against dog, you may count it quits.'

"'Quits?' he echoed.

"'In the matter of two yellow dogs only: and I have given up keeping
pets, having _you_. . . . Now listen: Did you ever guess that I
loved your wife?'

"It took him like a blow between the eyes. 'No, I didn't,' he
answered slowly, and then with a sudden rush of malignity, 'I wonder
it didn't occur to you, then--I wonder you didn't try to--to--tamper
with her.'

"'You would,' said I. 'It's the sort of man you are, you Farrell.
The next thing, you'll be capable of wondering if I didn't. . . .
Pah! and _you_ call _me_ Satan!' I spat. 'Now, take hold on your
fool head and think. For _her_ sake I grant you ease of that
suspicion, though in dealing with you it would be priceless to me.
Think what a peck of torture I'm letting run to waste, as that
waterfall yonder runs to waste in its basin. But it wouldn't be
true. Your wife was an angel. Drink that comfort--drink it into
every cranny of your soul. . . . And now hold your head again.
I loved Santa, I tell you.'

"'You let her die,' he muttered sullenly.

"'Think, you fool--think!' I commanded. 'If she had lived, you would
have died, and she would be sitting where you are sitting at this
moment, and I here, and the moon swimming above us two--Would you
have had it so?'

"'My God!' he blurted, wiping the back of a hand across his eyes.
'This is too much for me. . . .'

"I stood and picked up the engineering tool. 'For me, too,' said I,
'it is enough. . . . Now come and choose the spot, and I will fall to
my part of the work.'

"But to this he demurred, saying vaguely that he was upset; that the
spot for the grave must be chosen with care and by daylight; that he
must first finish the coffin, and then take some rest. There would
be time enough after we had breakfasted.

"I believed that I understood. . . . He wished to wash and wind the
body. So at dawn--by which time the coffin was ready--I told him
that he should be alone for a couple of hours, and went up the hill
again in the first light, to prospect. Again I tried to whistle the
dog after me: but this time he refused even to budge.

"I climbed no farther than before; that is, a little beyond the
ridge. For it gave upon a wide undulating valley to the slopes of
the second crater, which again partly overlapped the cone of the
third or highest. To descend and cross this first va