Now that the storm was gone they had allowed the fire to fall away until the hearth showed merely fragmentary dances of flame and a wide bed of dull red coals growing dimmer from moment to moment. Wung Lu had brought in a lamp--a large lamp with a circular wick that cast a bright, white light--but Kate had turned down the wick, and now it made only a brief circle of yellow in one corner of the room. The main illumination came from the fireplace and struck on the faces of Kate and Buck Daniels, while Joe Cumberland, on the couch at the end of the room, was only plainly visible when there was an extraordinarily high leap of the dying flames; but usually his face was merely a glimmering hint in the darkness--his face and the long hands which were folded upon his breast. Often when the flames leapt there was a crackling of the embers and the last of the log, and then the two nearer the fire would start and flash a glance, of one accord, towards the prostrate figure on the couch. That silence had lasted so long that when at length the dull voice of Joe Cumberland broke in, there was a ring of a most prophetic solemnity about it. "He ain't come," said the old man. "Dan ain't here." The others exchanged glances, but the eyes of Kate dropped sadly and fastened again upon the hearth. Buck Daniels cleared his throat like an orator. "Nobody but a fool," he said, "would have started out of Elkhead in a storm like this." "Weather makes no difference to Dan," said Joe Cumberland. "But he'd think of his hoss----" "Weather makes no difference to Satan," answered the faint, oracular voice of Joe Cumberland. "Kate!" "Yes?" "Is he comin'?" She did not answer. Instead, she got up slowly from her place by the fire and took another chair, far away in the gloom, where hardly a glimmer of light reached to her and there she let her head rest, as if exhausted, against the back of the seat. "He promised," said Buck Daniels, striving desperately to keep his voice cheerful, "and he never busts his promises." "Ay," said the old man, "he promised to be back--but he ain't here." "If he started after the storm," said Buck Daniels. "He didn't start after the storm," announced the oracle. "He was out in it." "What was that," cried Buck Daniels sharply. "The wind," said Kate, "for it's rising. It will be a cold night, to-night." "And he ain't here," said the old man monotonously. "Ain't there things that might hold him up?" asked Buck, with a touch of irritation. "Ay," said the old rancher, "they's things that'll hold him up. They's things that'll turn a dog wild, too, and the taste of blood is one of 'em!" The silence fell again.