“There was a time when this man had been the husband of that woman. She is a white woman, not an Indian, and he had loved her; I don’t suppose I could make you understand just how much he had loved her. And he had been told that she was dead. He had not seen her for a long time, but he still cared so much for her that when he heard she was dead he went on a high old drunk, and——” “A mighdy foony vay to show he vass sorry apowet id!” “When he got over it, and cut out the liquor, he determined to turn his back on the past and go far away, never to come back. Yet he didn’t; he went with Buffalo Bill, when it seemed he could do some good; for he had come to the decision to try to do some little good in the world hereafter, if he could. “I’m just telling you this so that you’ll understand something of the way he felt when he woke up there in the camp, and saw that this very woman, his wife, had waked him. The moon shone, and when he first saw her face he was sure it was her spirit. “She beckoned and put her hand on her lips; and he got up and followed her. He couldn’t help himself—it was as if he was in a dream, and he rather thought it was all a dream at the time. So he did just what she motioned him to do—stepped carefully on the blanket she laid down for him to step on, and so, using that to hide their footsteps, they went out of the camp. The moon was shining bright.” At intervals the staring German uttered strange German exclamations. Yet even then he did not understand the spirit in which this confession was being made; could not understand that Tom Conover felt the necessity of telling this, explaining this apparent desertion of Buffalo Bill, to some one. That the German had been a pard of the great scout was really the thing that drew it out of him; he hoped it would reach Buffalo Bill in that way, and that he would understand. “I still thought I was in a dream,” he went on, “or that I walked with a spirit. The woman had a horse, and we both mounted it and rode away toward this place. In a notch of the hills she picked up the child, which she had left there when she went back. And so we came on here. But I didn’t know you followed, or that we had been seen.” The German stared harder now. “You—you vass diss mans?” The flush deepened in Conover’s face and made a more vividly crimson the deep scar that disfigured his forehead. “I was that man!” he confessed, almost as if he stood convicted and abashed before this German. “Mein himmel!” The German threw up his hands. “I don’t expect you to understand it—my feelings,” went on Conover, “I don’t really suppose that anybody ever can; so I’ll not try to make it plainer, but——” The baron danced round the room in his excitement. “Den id vass you,” he said, stopping short, “vat I vollered; you unt dem vomans. You vass bot’ uff you riting on vun horse.” “Yes; and you got yourself in this fix by following us.”