Then, for a little while, he dropped endlessly down through pits of darkness and after that opened his eyes to recognize that he was being held with his head on Rowlett's knee. Rowlett saw the fluttering of the lids and whispered: "I'm goin' ter tote ye back thar--ter Harper's house. Hit's ther only chanst--an' I reckon I've got ter hurt ye right sensibly." Bas rose and hefted him slowly and laboriously, straightening up with a muscle-straining effort, until he stood with one arm under the limp knees and one under the blood-wet shoulders of his charge. For a moment he stood balancing himself with his feet wide apart, and then he started staggering doggedly down the stony grade, groping, at each step, for a foothold. In the light of the sinking moon the slowly plodding rescuer offered an inviting target, with both hands engaged beyond the possibility of drawing or using a weapon, but no shot was fired. The distance was not great, but the pace was slow, and the low moon would shortly drop behind the spruce fringe of the ridges. Then the burden-bearer would have to stumble forward through confused blackness--so he hastened his steps until his own breath rattled into an exhausted rasp and his own heart hammered with the bursting ache of effort. When he had reached the half-way point he put his load down and shouted clamorously for help, until the black wall of the Harper house showed an oblong of red light and the girl's voice came back in answer. "I've got a dyin' man hyar," he called, briefly, "an' I needs aid." Then as Maggard lay insensible in the mud, Bas squatted on his heels beside him and wiped the sweat drench from his face with his shirt-sleeve. It was with unsteady eyes that he watched a lantern crawling toward him: eyes to which it seemed to weave the tortuous course of a purposeless glow-worm. Then the moon dipped suddenly and the hills, ceasing to be visible shapes, were felt like masses of close crowded walls, but at length the lantern approached and, in its shallow circle of sickly yellow, it showed two figures--that of the old man and the girl. Dorothy carried the light, and when she held it high and let its rays fall on the two figures, one sitting stooped with weariness and the other stretched unconscious, her eyes dilated in a terror that choked her, and her face went white. But she said nothing. She only put down the lantern and slipped her arms under the shoulders that lay in the wet grass, shuddering as her hands closed on the warm moisture of blood, and Rowlett rose with an effort and rallied his spent strength to lift the inert knees. While the old man lighted their footsteps the little procession made its painful way down what was left of the mountainside, across the road, and up into the house. * * * * *