"Why,--uh--Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead."

The old man repeated the words, dazedly.

"Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead;--why, who else is dead, too?"

Billy Brue's emphasis, cunningly contrived by him to avoid giving
prominence to the word "dead," had suggested this inquiry in the first
moment of stupefaction.

"Nobody else dead--jest Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead."

"Jest Dan'l J.--my boy--my boy Dan'l dead!"

His mighty shape was stricken with a curious rigidity, erected there as
if it were a part of the mountain, flung up of old from the earth's
inner tragedy, confounded, desolate, ancient.

[Illustration: "'_WELL, BILLY BRUE, WHAT'S DOIN_'?'"]

Billy Brue turned from the stony interrogation of his eyes and took a
few steps away, waiting. A little wind sprang up among the higher
trees, the moments passed, and still the great figure stood transfixed
in its curious silence. The leathers creaked as the horse turned. The
messenger, with an air of surveying the canon, stole an anxious glance
at the old face. The sorrowful old eyes were fixed on things that were
not; they looked vaguely as if in search.

"Dan'l!" he said.