to talk. She moistened his lips and gave him a drink. He murmured
incoherently, sank again into a stupor, to rouse once more and
babble tike a madman. Then he lay quietly for long--so long that
sleep was claiming Joan. Suddenly he startled her by calling very
faintly but distinctly: "Water! Water!"

Joan bent over him, lifting his head, helping him to drink. She
could see his eyes, like dark holes in something white.

"Is--that--you--mother?" he whispered.

"Yes," replied Joan.

He sank immediately into another stupor or sleep, from which he did
not rouse. That whisper of his--mother--touched Joan. Bad men had
mothers just the same as any other kind of men. Even this Kells had
a mother. He was still a young man. He had been youth, boy, child,
baby. Some mother had loved him, cradled him, kissed his rosy baby
hands, watched him grow with pride and glory, built castles in her
dreams of his manhood, and perhaps prayed for him still, trusting he
was strong and honored among men. And here he lay, a shattered
wreck, dying for a wicked act, the last of many crimes. It was a
tragedy. It made Joan think of the hard lot of mothers, and then of
this unsettled Western wild, where men flocked in packs like wolves,
and spilled blood like water, and held life nothing.

Joan sought her rest and soon slept. In the morning she did not at
once go to Kells. Somehow she dreaded finding him conscious, almost
as much as she dreaded the thought of finding him dead. When she did
bend over him he was awake, and at sight of her he showed a faint