"We are 'free among the dead,' how does it go? 'Like unto them that are
wounded and lie in the grave.' What we say to each other here will stop
here with our breath. Let us put our memories in order for the last
reckoning. I think, John, you must, at some time in your life, have known
my father, Adam Bogardus? He was lost on the Snake River plains,
twenty-one years ago this autumn."

Receiving no answer, the pale young inquisitor went on, choosing his words
with intense deliberation as one feeling his way in the dark.

"Most of us believe in some form of communication that we can't explain,
between those who are separated in body, in this world, but closely united
in thought. Do I make myself clear?"

There was a sound of deep breathing from the bunk; it produced a similar
conscious excitement in the speaker. He halted, recovered himself, and
continued:--

"After my father's disappearance, my mother had a distinct
presentiment--it haunted her for years--that something had happened to him
at a place called One Man Station. Did you ever know the place?"

"I might have." The words came huskily.

"Father had left her at this place, and to her knowledge he never came
back. But she had this intimation--and suffered from it--that he did come
back and was foully dealt with there--wronged in body or mind. The place
had most evil associations for her; it was not strange she should have
connected it with the great disaster of her life. As you lay talking to