"And then--I suppose it was a sudden temptation--the brute took a step or two forward, came close behind me, and before I could turn, for I felt paralysed with the horror of my position, he raised his rifle as high as he could reach, and struck me a crashing blow upon the back of the head." "How do you know if you were looking in another direction?" "Because the evening sun cast his shadow upon the side of the canon, where it seemed to me in that momentary flash that one giant was smiting down another. Then I fell headlong down, and for a few moments all was darkness." "Go on, sir," said the old lawyer, who was deeply interested, for his _vis-a-vis_ was talking in a slow, laboured way, as if the recollection of the terrible scene was more than he could bear and choked him with emotion. "Then I came to myself, to lie helpless as if in a dream. I could not stir or make a sound; but I could hear distinctly, as I lay low down where I had fallen, the sounds made by some one lowering himself down the side of the canon. Now twigs were breaking, and now stones kept falling; and after what seemed to be a long time, full of a dull sense of pain and drowsiness, I was conscious of a heavy breathing as of a wild beast." "A bear," said the old lawyer involuntarily. "No," said the young man with a bitter smile; "a worse kind of wild beast than that: a man, sir--mine own familiar friend--Dan Portway." "Ah!" "He was searching my pockets, and taking everything about me; my roughly-made, plain gold ring--pure gold from a pocket in the mountains--what letters I had; everything. Of course I had not much with me; nearly all I possessed was at my tent in the saddlebags miles away." "You felt all this?" "And saw, though my eyes were nearly closed. And at last, as it seemed to me, he was about to finish his work by casting me down headlong into the profound depths of the great chasm, when a devilish thought entered his mind and seemed to flash into mine as he held me." There was another pause, and the young man's voice sounded very husky, and he seemed to be suffering the bygone horror over again as he recommenced: "I tell you I could not stir, but I could think, and feel, and see that devil's satisfied grin as he must have said to himself:-- "`Some day, perhaps, his body may be found, and then they will say he was last seen in my company, and it might prove awkward. They shall think he was killed by the Indians.'" During the earlier part of this narrative the old lawyer had leaned back in his chair; but as he grew interested he sat up, then leaned forward, and now rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and gazed full in the speaker's face, so as not to lose a gesture, the slightest play of his countenance, or a word. "Yes," he continued; "go on." "It was as I thought, and for a moment I tried to shut out the horror, and to ask God to forgive all I had done wrong, and spare me the horrible agony I was to feel before I died.