What baffled the slow mind of Bull Hunter was the effort to imagine a force so great that battle with it had reduced the invincible Campbell to this shaken wreck of his old self. Mere bullets could tear wounds in flesh and break bones; but mere bullets could not wreck the nerves of a man so that his hand trembled as if he were drunk or hysterical with weariness. He tried to work out this problem. He conceived a man of gigantic size, vast muscles, inexhaustible strength. The power of a bear and the swift cunning of a wild cat--such must have been the man who struck down Uncle Bill and sent him home a shattered remnant of his old self. There was another mystery. Why did the destroyer not finish his task? Why did he take pity on Uncle Bill Campbell and bind up the wounds he had himself made? Here the mind of Bull Hunter paused. He could not pass the mysterious idea of another than himself pitying Uncle Bill. It was pitying a hawk in the sky. Harry was taking away the dishes and throwing them in the little tub of lukewarm water where the grease would be carelessly soused off them. "Did you get up that stump?" asked Uncle Bill suddenly. There was a familiar ring in his voice. Woe to them if they had not carried out his orders! All three of the young men quaked, and Bull laid aside his book. "We done it," answered Joe in a quavering voice. "You done it?" asked Bill. "We--we dug her pretty well clear, then Bull pulled her up." Some of the wrath ebbed out of the face of Bill as he glanced at the huge form of Bull. "Stand up!" he ordered. Bull arose. The keen eye of the old man went over him from head to foot slowly. "Someday," he said slowly, speaking entirely to himself. "Someday--maybe!" What he expected from Bull "someday" remained unknown. The dishwashing was swiftly finished. Then Uncle Bill made a feeble effort to get off his boots, but his strength had been ebbing for some time. His sons dared not interfere as the old man leaned slowly over and strove to tug the boot from his wounded leg; but Bull remembered, all in a flood of tenderness, some half-dozen small, kind things that his uncle had said to him. That was long, long ago, when the orphan came into the Campbell family. In those days his stupidity had been attributed largely to the speed with which he had grown, and he was expected to become normally bright later on; and in those days Bill Campbell occasionally let fall some gentle word to the great boy with his big, frightened eyes. And the half-dozen instances came back to Bull in this moment.