h
agonies in his chest so that he had to wait awhile before he went on.

"Mighty few men would hev stood by me ... like he done.... Ef I'd been
his own blood-brother...." there he gulped, choked, and drifted off
again.

Cal Maggard next awoke with a strangely refreshed sense of recovery and
a blessed absence of pain. He seemed still unable to move, and he said
nothing, for in that strange realization of a brain brought back to
focus came a shock of new amazement.

Bas Rowlett bent above his pillow, but with a transformed face. The eyes
that were for the moment turned toward the door burned with a baleful
hatred and the lips were drawn into a vicious snarl.

This, too, must be part of the light-headedness, thought Maggard, but
instinctively he continued to simulate unconsciousness. This man had
been his steadfast and self-forgetful friend. So the wounded man fought
back the sense of clear and persistent reality, which had altered kindly
features into a gargoyle of vindictiveness, and lay unmoving until
Rowlett rose and turned his back.

Then, through the slits of warily screened eyes, he swept a hasty glance
about the room and found that except for the man who had carried him in
and himself it was empty. Probably that hate-blackness on the other face
was for the would-be assassin and not for himself, argued Maggard.

Rowlett went over and stood by the hearth, staring into the fire, his
hands clenching and unclenching in spasmodic violence.

This was a queer dream, mused Maggard, and more and more insistently it
refused to seem a dream.

More surely as he watched the face which the other turned to glare at
him did the instinct grow that he himself was the object of that bitter
animosity of expression.

He lay still and watched Rowlett thrust a hand into his overalls pocket
and scatter peanut shells upon the fire--objects which he evidently
wished to destroy. As he did this the standing figure laughed shortly
under his breath--and full realization came to the wounded man.

The revelation was as complete as it was ugly. As long as he lay
unmoving the pain seemed quiescent, and his head felt crystal clear--his
thought efficient. Perhaps he was dying--most probably he was. If so
this was a lucid interval before death, and in it his mind was playing
him no tricks. The supposed friend loomed in an unmasked and traitorous
light which even the preconceived idea could not confuse or mitigate.
Maggard did not want to gi