To one side of the paneled enclosure the men held their lanterns over an inert figure stretched upon the ground. Livingston was kneeling beside it. The girl got down from her horse, and came near them. "Is he dead?" she asked. "_Dead_--yes! The poor boy! May God have mercy on the brute who committed this crime! It is terrible--_terrible!_ Poor faithful Fritz! Scarcely more than a boy, yet possessing a man's courage and a man's heart!" He looked up at the girl's face, and was amazed at her indifference. Then he spoke to the men: "Go back and get a wagon and my saddle horse. I will stay here until you return. Leave one of the lanterns." They hurried away, while the man continued to kneel by the side of the dead herder. Hope watched him, wondering at his depth of feeling. Finally she asked: "Was he some relative of yours?" "No, only one of my herders--Fritz, a bright, good German boy. Why did you ask, Miss Hathaway?" "I thought because you cared so much,--seemed to feel so badly,--that he must be very near to you." "He is near to me," he replied, "only as all children of earth should be near to one another. Are you not also pained at this sight--this boy, in the very beginning of his manhood, lying here dead?" "Not _pained_--I can't truthfully say that I am pained--or care much in that way. He is dead, so what is the use of caring or worrying about it. That cannot bring him back to life again. Of course I would rather he had lived--that this had never happened, yet I do not feel pain, only an abhorrence. I couldn't touch him as you are doing, not for anything!" "And you are not pained! _You_, a woman with a white soul and a clean heart--one of God's choicest creations--_you_ stand there without a pang of sorrow--dry-eyed. Haven't you a heart, girl?" He rose to his feet, holding up the lantern until it shone squarely in her face. "Look at him lying there! See the blood upon his clothes--the look on his face! What he suffered! See what he holds so tightly in his hand,--his last thought,--a letter from his sweetheart over in Germany, the girl he was to have married, who is even now on her way to him. He had been reading her letter all day. It came this morning, and he held it in his hand planning their future with a happy heart, when some brute sent a bullet here. If it could have been me, how gladly I would make the exchange, for I have nothing that this poor boy possessed--mother, sweetheart--no one. Yet _you_, a girl, can see him so, unmoved! Good God, what are you, _stone_? See his face, he did not die at once, and suffering, _dying_, still held that letter. If not his story, then does not his suffering appeal to you? His dying groans, can you not hear them?" "Stop!" she cried, backing away from him until she leaned against her horse for support. "Stop! How _dare_ you talk like that to me! His _groans_----" She sobbed wildly, her face buried in her saddle, which she clutched.