He was enjoying the ride with an iron kind of humor, for there was in his
thoughts a picture. "The sequel's sequel for Hagar's brush to-morrow," he
said as he paused on the top of a hill to which he had come from the
highroad and looked round upon the verdant valleys almost spectrally quiet
in the moonlight. He got off his horse and took out a revolver. It clicked
in his hand.

"No," he said, putting it up again, "not here. It would be too damned
rough on the horse, after riding so hard, to leave him out all night."

He mounted again. He saw before him a fine stretch of moor at an easy
ascent. He pushed the horse on, taking a hedge or two as he went. The
animal came over the highest point of the hill at full speed. Its blood
was up, like its master's. The hill below this point suddenly ended in a
quarry. Neither horse nor man knew it until the yielding air cried over
their heads like water over a drowning man as they fell to the rocky bed
far beneath.

An hour after Telford became conscious. The horse was breathing painfully
and groaning beside him. With his unbroken arm he felt for his revolver.
It took him a long time.

"Poor beast!" he said, and pushed the hand out toward the horse's head.
In an instant the animal was dead.

He then drew the revolver to his own temple, but paused. "No, it wasn't to
be," he said. "I'm a dead man anyway," and fell back.

Day was breaking when the agony ceased. He felt the gray damp light on his
eyes, though he could not see He half raised his head. "God--bless--you,