diminished to far titanic echoes. Where Soper's cabin had stood there
was a wet, glistening heap of fallen logs and rafters, charred and
twisted. The lightning flash had revealed more to the rider than the
desolation of the burned and abandoned homestead. He saw with instant
vividness the wrecked framework of his own plans. He heard the echo of
Fadeaway's sneering laugh in the fury of the wind. He told himself
that he had been duped and that he deserved it. Lacking physical
strength to carry him through to a place of tentative safety, he gave
up, and credited his sudden regret to true repentance rather than to
weakness. He would return to the Concho, knowing that his brother
would forgive him. He wept as he thought of his attitude of the
repentant and broken son returning in sorrow to atone for his sin and
shame. He magnified his wrongdoing to heroic proportions endeavoring
to filch some sentimental comfort from the romantic. He it was that
needed the sympathy of the world and not his brother John; John was a
plodder, a clod, good enough, but incapable of emotion, or the finer
feelings. And Eleanor Loring . . . she could have saved him from all
this. He had begun well; had written acceptable verse . . . then had
come her refusal to marry him. What a fool he had been through it all!
The wind and rain chastised his emotional intoxication, and he turned
shivering to look for shelter. Dismounting, he crept beneath a low
spruce and shivered beneath the scant covering of his saddle-blanket.
To-morrow the sun would shine on a new world. He would arise and
conquer his temptation. As he drifted to troubled sleep he knew, deep
in his heart, that despite his heroics he would at that moment have
given the little canvas sack of his brother's money for the
obliterating warmth of intoxication.

With the morning sun he rose and saddled. About to mount, his
stiffened muscles blundered. He slipped and fell. The horse, keen