ize that rifle? There’s F. Witham cut on the stock of it.”

Payne said nothing, for the trooper signed to him.

“I fancy Shannon wants to talk to you,” he said.

The lad knelt down, slipped one arm about his comrade’s neck, and took the mittened hand in his own. Shannon smiled up at him feebly.

“Witham’s horse and his cap,” he said, and then stopped, gasping horribly.

“You will remember that, boys,” said the Sergeant.

Payne could say nothing. Trooper Shannon and he had ridden through icy blizzard and scorching heat together, and he felt his manhood melting as he looked down into his dimming eyes. There was a curious look in them which suggested a strenuous endeavour and an appeal, and the lips moved again.

“It was,” said Shannon, and moved his head a little on Payne’s arm, apparently in an agony of effort.

Then the birches roared about them, and drowned the feeble utterance, while, when the gust passed, all three, who had not heard what preceded it, caught only one word—“Witham.”

Trooper Shannon’s eyes closed, and his head fell back, while the snow beat softly in to his upturned face, and there was a very impressive silence, intensified by the moaning of the wind, until the rattle of wheels came faintly down the trail.

CHAPTER V—MISS BARRINGTON COMES HOME

The long train was slackening speed and two whistles rang shrilly through the roar of wheels when Miss Barrington laid down the book with which she had beguiled her journey of fifteen hundred miles, and rose from her seat in a corner of the big first-class car. The car was sumptuously upholstered, and its decorations tasteful as well as lavish, but just then it held no other passenger, and Miss Barrington smiled curiously as she stood, swaying a little, in front of the mirror at one end of it,