They--and naught else--had brought him his burden. That complete justice might be meted out to such as they, he had dipped his hands into the warm blood of his own race, and was an outlaw bearing an honored name, stalking forth, pure of heart, and yet masked and draped with deceit, among his own kind. And for what ultimate good? Alas! he was denied even the solace of a look into futurity. And yet--born in advance of his time, as the Son of God was born ahead of His--there was yet something in him which--while he shrank from the depth and bitterness of _his_ cup--lifted him, in his unmated loneliness, in his blindness, to far-off light--high above the material world. There to suffer, there to endure, and yet--there. CHAPTER XLI. [Illustration: 9365] T was the day following the burial of the body of Dan Willis. Old man Purdy, whom Carson had gone to see, was at Dilk's cross-roads store with a basket of fresh eggs, which he had brought to exchange for their market value in coffee. Several other farmers were seated about the store on nail-kegs and soap-boxes whittling sticks and chewing tobacco, their slow tongues busy with the details of the recent death and interment. Old Purdy was speaking of how the children had discovered the body, and remarked that it would have been found several hours sooner if Carson Dwight had only taken the shorter road that day to Springtown instead of the longer. “Why, Dwight come from Darley, didn't he?” asked Dilk, as he wrote down the number of eggs he had counted on a piece of brown paper on the counter and waited before continuing. “Why, yes,” Purdy made answer; “he told me, as we were goin' through the work he had to do at my house, that he had gone to Springtown an' stayed all that night an' then rid on to me.” The store-keeper's hands hovered over the basket for an instant, then they rested on its edge. “Well, I can't make out what under the sun Dwight went so far out o' his way for. It's fully five mile farther, and the road is so rough and washed out that it's mighty nigh out of use.” “Well, that does look kind o' funny, come to think of it,” admitted Purdy, as he gazed into the bland faces around him. “I never thought of it before, but it certainly looks odd, to say the least.” “Of course thar may not be a thing _in_ it,” said Dilk, in a guarded tone, “but it _does_ all seem strange, especially after we've heard so much talk about the threats passin' betwixt them very two men. I mean, you see, neighbors, that it sort o' looks, providential that--that Dan met with the accident before Dwight an' him come together over here. That's what I mean.” All heads nodded gravely, all minds were busy, each in its own individual way, and stirred by something more exciting than the mere accidental death of Willis or the formality of his burial.