He who preached wisdom and claimed to be taught by the flowers, who loved life and hated injustice, who mingled with his kind, ever searching for that one who needed him, he must become the woe and the bane and curse of those he would only serve!  Insupportable and pitiful fate!  The fiends of the past mocked him, like wicked ghouls, voiceless and dim.  The faces of the men he had killed were around him in the gray gloom, pale, drifting visages of distortion, accusing him, claiming him.  Likewise, these gleams of faces were specters of his mind, a procession eternal, mournful, and silent, wending their way on and on through the regions of his thought.  All were united, all drove him, all put him on the trail of catastrophe.  They foreshadowed the future, they inclosed events, they lured him with his endless illusions.  He was in the vortex of a vast whirlpool, not of water or of wind, but of life.  Alas! he seemed indeed the very current of that whirlpool, a monstrous force, around which evil circled and lurked and conquered.  Wade—­who had the ill-omened croak of the raven—­Wade—­who bent his driven steps toward hell!

* * * * *

In the brilliant sunlight of the summer morning Wade bent his resistless steps down toward White Slides Ranch.  The pendulum had swung.  The hours were propitious.  Seemingly, events that already cast their shadows waited for him.  He saw Jack Belllounds going out on the fast and furious ride which had become his morning habit.

Columbine intercepted Wade.  The shade of woe and tragedy in her face were the same as he had pictured there in his gloomy vigil of the night.

“My friend, I was coming to you....  Oh, I can bear no more!”

Her hair was disheveled, her dress disordered, the hands she tremblingly held out bore discolored marks.  Wade led her into the seclusion of the willow trail.

“Oh, Ben!...  He fought me—­like—­a beast!” she panted.

“Collie, you needn’t tell me more,” said Wade, gently.  “Go up to Wils.  Tell him.”

“But I must tell you.  I can bear—­no more....  He fought me—­hurt me—­and when dad heard us—­and came—­Jack lied....  Oh, the dog!...  Ben, his father believed—­when Jack swore he was only mad—­only trying to shake me—­for my indifference and scorn....  But, my God!—­Jack meant....”

“Collie, go up to Wils,” interposed the hunter.

“I want to see Wils.  I need to—­I must.  But I’m afraid....  Oh, it will make things worse!”

“Go!”

She turned away, actuated by more than her will.

“Collie!” came the call, piercingly and strangely after her.  Bewildered, startled by the wildness of that cry, she wheeled.  But Wade was gone.  The shaking of the willows attested to his hurry.

* * * * *

Old Belllounds braced his huge shoulders against the wall in the attitude of a man driven to his last stand.