At eleven o’clock I am to die; to go out of the world of sunshine and azure seas, of hills and vales of living green, of the sweet breath of wild flowers and fruit bloom, of light and laughter and the music of Life, to----what? Where? How far does the Soul go? What follows that awful moment of final dissolution? At eleven o’clock I shall know; for I must die. There is no hope, no help; though my hand has never been raised against mortal man or woman--never have I taken a human life. At the stroke of the hour a great crowd will stand in the prison yard, and gape at the scaffold, and see the drop fall, and--fascinated and frowning--gaze with straining eyes at the Thing dangling at the end of a hempen rope. A Soul will go out into immeasurable space. A purple mark on my throat will tell the story of death by strangulation. Two bodies will lie stark and dead tonight--his and mine. His will be laid in the pine box that belongs to the dishonored dead; while mine will be housed in rosewood, and satin, and silver. You do not understand? Listen, let me tell you! Let me go back to the first time we ever met--he and I. After college days were over, I left the Atlantic coast and all that Life there meant to me, and came out to the West of the sagebrush, and the whirlwinds, and the little horned toads. And there in the wide wastes where there is nothing but the immensity of space and the everlasting quiet of the desert, I went into business for myself. Business there? Oh, yes! for out there where men go mad or die, cattle and sheep may thrive. I, who loved Life and the association of bright minds, and everything that such companionship gives, invested all I had (and little enough it was!) in a business of which I knew nothing, except that those men who went there with a determination to stick to the work till success should find them, brought away bags full of gold--all they could carry--as they came back into the world they had known before their self-banishment. So I, too, went there, and bought hundreds of sheep--bleating--blear-eyed, stupid creatures that they are! I, essentially a man of cities and of people, began a strange, new life there, becoming care-taker of the flocks myself.