his family were giving him the honors of the dead."

"I warned ye about this pumping out old shafts. You can't tell what you'll
find in the bottom. I suppose you know there are things in this world,
Boy, a good deal worse than death?"

"Desertion is worse. It is not my father's death I want explained, it is
his life, your life, in secret, these twenty years! Can you explain that?"

The packer doubled his bony fist and brought it down on the bunk-side.
"Now you talk like a man! I been waiting to hear you say that. Yes, I can
answer that question, if you ain't afeard of the answer!"

"I am keeping alive to hear it!" said Paul in a guarded voice.

"You might say you're keeping me alive to tell it. It's a good thing to
git off of one's mind; but it's a poor thing to hand over to a son. All
I've got to leave ye, though: the truth if you can stand it! Where do you
want I should begin?"

"At the night when you came back to One Man Station."

"How'd you know I come back?"

"You were back there in your fever, living over something that happened in
that place. There was a wind blowing and the door wouldn't shut. And
something had to be lifted,"--the old man's eyes, fixed upon his son, took
a look of awful comprehensions,--"something heavy."

"Yes; great Lord, it was heavy! And I been carrying it ever since!" His