He sank back in his chair, while Rathburn, perplexed and uncomprehending, gazed startled at him. The white firelight had conjured all the room from out the dusky nullity that had been creeping over it. The pendent trophies from the rafters seemed to sway as the light chased the shadows through their midst. The glad scarlet of the strings of peppers asserted its tint anew, and many hanks of saffron yarn lent it contrast and company. Marcella’s fair face shone out upon the background of flickering brown and fleeting gold, and the night seemed to have grown younger with this sense of movement and life and light; the nerves took less heed of the lateness of the hour. The dog turned his neck in a way that challenged dislocation, and looked about the room; then rose slowly and stiffly, taking it for granted that, with this new cheer, it was day, and now and then wagging a languid tail as he glanced around at Marcella, expecting to see her set about getting breakfast. Not once did Rathburn’s absorption flag as he sat and steadfastly gazed at his host; he hardly moved an eyelash, so tense, so fixed, so strained, was his attention. As Eli Strobe glanced up from the fire he encountered the intent inquiry in Rathburn’s face. “Ye seen his harnt,” he reiterated, in reply to the look. “He’s dead. I kilt Teck Jepson myself, an’ I oughter know. He’s dead.” A sudden swift expression crossed the stranger’s face like a flash of light. Marcella saw the gleam of his teeth, white under his yellow mustache; he put up one hand and stroked it, as was his wont in excitement. “Why, now, that’s a fact!” he rejoined coolly. “I had forgotten that I had heard that.” The next moment he leaned forward, extending the other hand half closed, and with a delicate tentative gesture he laid it on the constable’s wrist. “Let me feel your pulse, Mr. Strobe,” he said irrelevantly. “You are still getting better, I suppose?” The constable silently submitted. Then pursuing the subject, he added. “They can’t do nuthin’ ter me fur it, though,—me bein’ officer o’ the law, an’ Teck engaged in a onlawful act. I pulled Teck off’n his hoss-critter an’ bruk his neck.” He nodded his head in doughty triumph. “I war sorry some arterwards. Teck war a good man in the main.” “Well, his ‘harnt’ ain’t a good ‘harnt,’” the young man flippantly declared.