“One day when he was almost three I rode off through the hills, and when I came back the boy was gone.  I rode with a posse everywhere, hunting him; aye, Anthony, the trail which I started then I have kept at ever since, year after year, and here it ends where it began—­at the grave of Joan!

“Finally I came on news that a man much like John Bard in appearance had been seen near my house that day.  Then I knew it was Bard in fact.  He had seen the image of the woman we both loved in the boy.  He was all that was left of her on earth.  After these years I can read his heart clearly; I know why he took the boy.

“Then I left this place.  I could not bear the sight of the grave; for she slept in peace, and I lived in hell waiting for the return of my son.

“At last I went east; I was at Madison Square Garden and saw you ride.  It was the face of Joan that looked back at me; and I knew that I was close to the end of the trail.

“The next night I called out John Bard.  He had been in hell all those years, like me, for he had waited for my coming.  He begged me to let him have you; said you loved him as a father; I only laughed.  So we fought, and he fell; and then I saw you running over the lawn toward us.

“I remembered Joan, her pride and her fierceness, and I knew that if I waited a son would kill his father that night.  So I turned and fled through the trees.  Anthony, do you believe me; do you forgive me?”

The memory of the clumsy, hungered tenderness of John Bard swept about Anthony.

He cried:  “How can I believe?  My father has killed my father; what is left?”

The solemn voice replied:  “Anthony, my son!”

He saw the great, blunt-fingered hands which had killed men, which were feared through the length and breadth of the mountain-desert, stretched out to him.

“Anthony Drew!” said the voice.

His hand went out, feebly, by slow degrees, and was caught in a mighty double clasp.  Warmth flowed through him from that grasp, and a great emotion troubled him, and a voice from deep to deep echoed within him—­the call of blood to blood.  He knew the truth, for the hate burned out in him and left only an infinite sadness.

He said:  “What of the man who loved me?  Whom I love?”

“I have done penance for that death,” answered William Drew, “and I shall do more penance before I die.  For I am only your father in name, but he is the father in your thoughts and in your love.  Is it true?”

“It is true,” said Anthony.

And the other, bitterly:  “In his life he was as strong as I; in his death he is still stronger.  It is his victory; his shadow falls between us.”

But Anthony answered:  “Let us go together and bring his body and bury it at the left side of—­my mother.”

“Lad, it is the one thing we can do together, and after that?”

A plaintive sound came to the ear of Anthony, and he looked down to see Sally Fortune weeping at the grave of Joan.  Better than both the men she understood, perhaps.  In the deep tenderness which swelled through him he caught a sense of the drift of life through many generations of the past and projecting into the future, men and women strong and fair and each with a high and passionate love.