Under the terrific action and still more terrific quiescence of this picture lay the sick man, propped high on a couch and wrapped to the chest in a Navajo blanket.

“Dad,” said Kate Cumberland, “Doctor Hardin was not in town.  I’ve brought out Doctor Byrne, a newcomer.”

The invalid turned his white head slowly towards them, and his shaggy brows lifted and fell slightly—­a passing shadow of annoyance.  It was a very stern face, and framed in the long, white hair it seemed surrounded by an atmosphere of Arctic chill.  He was thin, terribly thin—­not the leanness of Byrne, but a grim emaciation which exaggerated the size of a tall forehead and made his eyes supernally bright.  It was in the first glance of those eyes that Byrne recognized the restlessness of which Kate had spoken; and he felt almost as if it were an inner fire which had burned and still was wasting the body of Joseph Cumberland.  To the attentions of the doctor the old man submitted with patient self-control, and Byrne found a pulse feeble, rapid, but steady.  There was no temperature.  In fact, the heat of the body was a trifle sub-normal, considering that the heart was beating so rapidly.

Doctor Byrne started.  Most of his work had been in laboratories, and the horror of death was not yet familiar, but old Joseph Cumberland was dying.  It was not a matter of moment.  Death might be a week or a month away, but die soon he inevitably must; for the doctor saw that the fire was still raging in the hollow breast of the cattleman, but there was no longer fuel to feed it.

He stared again, and more closely.  Fire without fuel to feed it!

Doctor Byrne gave what seemed to be an infinitely muffled cry of exultation, so faint that it was hardly a whisper; then he leaned closer and pored over Joe Cumberland with a lighted eye.  One might have thought that the doctor was gloating over the sick man.

Suddenly he straightened and began to pace up and down the room, muttering to himself.  Kate Cumberland listened intently and she thought that what the man muttered so rapidly, over and over to himself, was:  “Eureka!  Eureka!  I have found it!”

Found what?  The triumph of mind over matter!

On that couch was a dead body.  The flutter of that heart was not the strong beating of the normal organ; the hands were cold; even the body was chilled; yet the man lived.

Or, rather, his brain lived, and compelled the shattered and outworn body to comply with its will.  Doctor Byrne turned and stared again at the face of Cumberland.  He felt as if he understood, now, the look which was concentrated so brightly on the vacant air.  It was illumined by a steady and desperate defiance, for the old man was denying his body to the grave.

The scene changed for Randall Byrne.  The girl disappeared.  The walls of the room were broken away.  The eyes of the world looked in upon him and the wise men of the world kept pace with him up and down the room, shaking their heads and saying:  “It is not possible!”