Apparently oblivious when a part of this same crowd had congregated at the train, he had nevertheless observed them individual by individual; and in his own consciousness had known that the moment, his moment, had not come:  for a leader, the leader, was not there.  Again when the train had pulled in he had watched—­and still the leader did not appear.  But he was not deceived.  As he had trusted in the girl’s coming he had trusted in another’s following surreptitiously; and as now he heard that one voice sounding above the other voices he knew he had been right.  For the man at the head of that pursuing mob which gained on them so rapidly block by block, the man whose influence in those brief hours the Indian and the girl had been alone in the tiny room at the hotel had vitalised the lukewarm racial hostility into a thing of menace, was the same man whose life he had once saved, the same man about whose throat ere the identical night had passed his fingers had closed:  Clayton Craig by name, one time of Boston, Mass., but now, by his uncle’s will, master of the Buffalo Butte ranch house!

Meanwhile in the study of the parsonage Clifford Mitchell was again looking out the single window.  Time and time again he had tried to work—­and as often failed.  At last he had conformed to the inevitable and was merely waiting.  The house was on the outskirts of the town and the window faced the open prairie; bare and rolling as far as the eye could reach.  He was city bred, this mild-faced servant of God, and as yet the prairie country was a thing at which to marvel.  He was looking out upon it now, absently, thoughtfully, wondering at its immensity and its silence—­when of a sudden he became conscious that it was no longer silent.  Instead to his ears, growing louder moment by moment, penetrating the illy constructed walls, came an indistinct roar; rising, lowering, yet ever constant:  a sound unlike any other on earth, distinctive as the silence preceding had been typical—­the clamour of angry, menacing human voices en masse. Once, not long before, in a city street the listener had heard that identical sound; and recognition was instantaneous.  Swift as memory he recalled the strike that had been its cause, the horde of sympathisers who had of a sudden appeared as from the very earth, the white face and desperate figure of the solitary “scab” fighting a moment, and a moment only, for life, in their midst.  Swift as memory came that picture; and swift upon its heels, blotting it out, the present returned.  Clifford Mitchell had not been among this people long; yet already he had caught the spirit of the place, and as he listened he knew full well what a similar gathering among them would mean.  He was not a brave man, this blue-eyed pastor; not a drop of fighting blood was in his veins; and as moment after moment passed and the sound grew nearer and nearer, the first real terror of his life came creeping over him.  Not in his mind was there a doubt as