"True, there are, and great things, but, Kalman, boy, I have tried them, and to-night after thirty years, as I speak to you--my God!--my heart is sick of hunger for something better than things! Love! my boy, love is the best!" "Poor Jack!" said Kalman softly, "dear old boy!" and went out.
But of that hunger of the heart they never spoke again.
And now at the end of five years' absence she was coming again.
How vivid to Kalman was his remembrance of the last sight he had of her.

It was at the Night Hawk ranch, and on the night succeeding that of the tragedy at the mine.

In the inner room, beside his father's body, he was sitting, his mind busy with the tragic pathos of that grief-tortured, storm-beaten life.

Step by step, as far as he knew it, he was tracing the tear-wet, blood-stained path that life had taken; its dreadful scenes of blood and heart agony were passing before his mind; when gradually he became aware that in the next room the Sergeant, with bluff and almost brutal straightforwardness, was telling her the story of Rosenblatt's dreadful end.

"And then, begad! after grilling the wretch for all that time, didn't the infernal, bloodthirsty fiend in the most cheerful manner touch off the powder and blow the man into eternity." Then through the thin partition he heard her faint cry of horror.