Lying in the edge of the water, he found a dark blue shawl that she had been wont to wear about her shoulders when the weather was cold. Beside it lay a tortoise-shell comb. A branch that hung low over the lake had kept for him a few strands of hair that was of the color of dark copper. He wrung the water from the shawl and put it, with the other little treasures, on the snow beside him. Almost he wished, now, that he had killed Mayfield---- A sudden weird, skittering shriek split the air like a knife. He turned his head quickly. Through the mist of his sorrow he saw blind Cat-Eye Mayfield rushing toward the lake. Mayfield's thin lips were parted and jerking; his blackened face was contorted and hideous. No man may be himself when he has suffered as young Wolfe had suffered; Wolfe laughed thickly, oddly, mimicking the hoarse laugh that was Mayfield's. "Haw-haw-haw!" The sightless man fell to his hands and knees and began to grope for the edge of the lake. Soon he had found it. Then he straightened and turned his hideous face--a singular thing, and inexplicable--as squarely toward Little Buck Wolfe as though he had eyes to see him. "I'm a-goin' to give up what the' is left o' me to make you suffer more!" Mayfield gibbered. "I'm a-goin' to lay down thar in 'at black hole wi' her--wi' Tot Singleton--I'm a-goin' to be buried in the same grave wi' her, yore wife, and he'p yeself ef ye can!" Yes, the man was insane. Hatred had absorbed all his faculties. Wolfe stood like a work in bronze, and stared. Mayfield ran into the water, cursing as he went, and sank like a stone, down, down, down to darkness eternal. Wolfe even went whiter as he watched the bubbles and lessening ripples that marked the spot where the worst man in the world had died that his devilish triumph might be a little greater. His lips moved, and it was to say this, brokenly, "My cup--of bitterness--is brimming. Why, my God, why?" He made his way back to the lonesome cabin. He threw the burst shotgun out to the snow, which hid it mercifully, and tossed Mayfield's slouch hat into the fire. There was a little of sweet, sad comfort in handling the things that had been his wife's. When he could no longer bear to look upon them, he pushed a chair to the cabin's front doorway and sat down, unmindful of the cold, and absently watched the chilled sun sink behind the snowy forest. A great silence was about him. There was not even a wind to sigh in the tops of the giant hemlocks. It was quite as though he were the sole inhabitant of some lost, dead world. XXIII When darkness had fallen, Wolfe closed the door and went to the low-burned fire.