letters that struck me between the eyes like a hammer. Mrs. Dan
Bennett had been foully murdered by me, in a fit of sudden jealousy,
and I had disappeared with the baby! The husband had returned
unexpectedly to find her dying, so he said, but too far gone to call
for help, and with barely sufficient strength to tell him who did it
and how! Then the paper went on with the tale of my courting her,
and her turning me down for Bennett. It told how I had gone off
alone up into the hills, turning into a bear that nobody, man or
child, could approach. It said I had brooded there all this time
till the mania got uppermost, and so came down to wreak my
vengeance. They never even did me the credit of calling me crazy; I
was a fiend incarnate, a beast without soul, and a lot of things
like that; and, remember, I had never harmed a living thing in all
my life. However, that wasn't what hurt. What turned me into a dull,
dead, suffering thing was the knowledge that she was gone. For hours
I couldn't get beyond that fact. Then came the realization that
Bennett had done it, for I reasoned that he had dragged a hint of
the truth from her by very force of the fear he held her in--and
slain her. God!--the awful rage that came over me! But there was
nothing to do; I had sworn to guard the little one, so I couldn't
take vengeance on him. I couldn't go back and prove my innocence,
for that would give the child to him. What a night I spent! The next
day I saw I had been indicted by the grand jury and was a wanted
man. From a distance I watched myself become an outlaw; watched the
county put a price upon my head, which Bennett doubled; watched
public opinion rise to such a heat that posses began to scour the
mountains. What I noted in particular was a statement in the paper
that 'The sorrowing husband takes his bereavement with the quiet
courage which marks a brave man'! That roused me more than the
knowledge that he had made me a wolf and set my friends on my track,