himself beside the camp-fire to smoke and rest awhile before going to
bed. The silence of the wilderness enfolded lake and shore; yet
presently it came to be a silence accentuated by near and distant
sounds, faint, wild, lonely--the low hum of falling water, the splash of
tiny waves on the shore, the song of insects, and the dismal hoot
of owls.

"Bill Belllounds--an' he needs a hunter," soliloquized Bent Wade, with
gloomy, penetrating eyes, seeing far through the red embers. "That will
suit me an' change my luck, likely. Livin' in the woods, away from
people--I could stick to a job like that.... But if this White Slides is
close to the old trail I'll never stay."

He sighed, and a darker shadow, not from flickering fire, overspread his
cadaverous face. Eighteen years ago he had driven the woman he loved
away from him, out into the world with her baby girl. Never had he
rested beside a camp-fire that that old agony did not recur! Jealous
fool! Too late he had discovered his fatal blunder; and then had begun a
search over Colorado, ending not a hundred miles across the wild
mountains from where he brooded that lonely hour--a search ended by news
of the massacre of a wagon-train by Indians.

That was Bent Wade's secret.

And no earthly sufferings could have been crueler than his agony and
remorse, as through the long years he wandered on and on. The very good
that he tried to do seemed to foment evil. The wisdom that grew out of
his suffering opened pitfalls for his wandering feet. The wildness of
men and the passion of women somehow waited with incredible fatality for
that hour when chance led him into their lives. He had toiled, he had