“Take me away!” she murmured.  “I’m sick—­sick at heart.  Take me away!”

Indeed, she was scarcely sure of her poise, and tottered where she stood.  Doctor Byrne slipped his arm about her and led her away, supporting half her weight.  They went slowly, by small, soft steps, towards the house, and before they reached it, he knew that she was weeping.  But if there was sadness in Byrne, there was also a great joy.  He was afire, for there is a flamelike quality in hope.  Loss of blood and the stifling smoke, rather than a mortal injury or the touch of fire, had brought Black Bart close to death, but now that his breathing was restored, and almost normal, he gained rapidly.  One instant he lingered on the border between life and death; the next, the brute’s eyes opened and glittered with dim recognition up towards Dan, and he licked the hand which supported his head.  At Dan’s direction, a blanket was brought, and after Dan had lifted Black Bart upon it, four men raised the corners of the blanket and carried the burden towards the house.  One of the cowpunchers went ahead bearing the light.  This was the sight which Doctor Byrne and Kate Cumberland saw from the veranda of the ranch-house as they turned and looked back before going in.

“A funeral procession,” suggested the doctor.

“No,” she answered positively.  “If Black Bart were dead, Dan wouldn’t allow any hands save his own to touch the body.  No, Black Bart is alive!  Yet, it’s impossible.”

The word “impossible,” however, was gradually dropping from the vocabulary of Randall Byrne.  True, the wolf-dog had seemed dead past recovery and across the eyes of Byrne came a vision of the dead rising from their graves.  Yet he merely shook his head and said nothing.

“Ah!” she broke in.  “Look!”

The procession drew nearer, heading towards the back of the big house, and now they saw that Dan Barry walked beside the body of Black Bart, a smile on his lifted face.  They disappeared behind the back of the house.

Byrne heard the girl murmuring, more to herself than to him:  “Once he was like that all the time.”

“Like what?” he asked bluntly.

She paused, and then her hand dropped lightly on his arm.  He could not see more than a vague outline of her in the night, only the dull glimmer of her face as she turned her head, and the faint whiteness of her hand.

“Let’s say good-night,” she answered, at length.  “Our little worlds have toppled about our heads to-night—­all your theories, it seems, and, God knows, all that I have hoped.  Why should we stay here and make ourselves miserable by talk?”

“But because we have failed,” he said steadily, “is that a reason we should creep off and brood over our failure in silence?  No, let’s talk it out, man to man.”

“You have a fine courage,” said the girl.  “But what is there we can say?”

He answered:  “For my part, I am not so miserable as you think.  For I feel as if this night had driven us closer together, you see; and I’ve caught a perspective on everything that has happened here.”