"I was really doing better, wasn't I, John?" he went on, still smiling. "You had helped,--you two,"--he looked from his young friend to the older one, with the intentness of his near-sighted gaze. "Tell them"--his eyes closed and his voice sank until it was almost inaudible,--"tell them at the hill--Evelyn--the light of all--of all--the year." The doctor had put down Warry's wrist and turned away. The dawn-wind sweeping across the prairie shook the windows in the room and moaned far away in the lonely house. The bishop's great hand rested gently on the dying man's head; his voice rose in supplication,--the words coming slowly, as if he remembered them from a far-off time: _Unto God's gracious mercy and protection we commit thee._ Saxton dropped to his knees, and a sob broke from him. _The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee._ The old man's voice was very low, and sank to a whisper. _The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace, both now and evermore._ No one moved until the doctor put his head down to Warry's heart to listen. Then Wheaton watched him with fascinated eyes as he gathered up his instruments, which shone cold and bright in the gray light of the morning. CHAPTER XXXVI HOME THROUGH THE SNOW There was much to do, and John Saxton had been back and forth twice between the ranch house and the village before the sun had crept high into the heavens. The little village had been slow to grasp the fact of the tragedy at its doors which had already carried its name afar. There was much to do and yet it was so pitifully little after all! Warry Raridan was dead, and eager men were scouring the country for his murderer; but John Saxton sat in the room where Warry had died. It seemed to John that the end had come of all the world. He sharpened his grief with self-reproach that he had been a party to an exploit so foolhardy: they should never have attempted a midnight descent upon an unknown foe; and yet it was Raridan's own plan. It was like Warry, too, and the thought turned John's memory into grooves that time was to deepen. This was the only man who had ever brought him friendship. The first night at the club in Clarkson, when Raridan had spoken to him, came back, vivid in all its details. He recalled with a great ache in his heart their talk there in the summer twilight; the charm that he had felt first that night, and how Warry had grown more and more into his life, and brightened it. He could not, in the fullness of his sorrow, see himself again walking alone the ways they had known together. Even the town seemed to him in these early hours an unreal place; it was not possible that it lay only a few hours distant, with its affairs going on uninterruptedly; nor could he realize that he would himself take up there the threads of his life that now seemed so hopelessly broken.