The man who had spoken sprang toward his rifle in the chimney corner.

But the movement was his last; a blinding flash and shattering report interposed between him and his weapon.

The impulse carried him forward headlong into the fire, that hissed and spluttered with his blood, and Lance Harriott, with his smoking pistol, strode past him to the door.
Already far down the trail there were hurried voices, the crack and crackling of impending branches growing fainter and fainter in the distance.

Lance turned back to the solitary living figure--the old man.
Yet he might have been dead too, he sat so rigid and motionless, his fixed eyes staring vacantly at the body on the hearth.

Before him on the table lay the cheap photographs, one evidently of himself, taken in some remote epoch of complexion, one of a child which Lance recognized as Flip.
"Tell me," said Lance hoarsely, laying his quivering hand on the table, "was Bob Ridley your son ?" "My son," echoed the old man in a strange, far-off voice, without turning his eyes from the corpse,--"my son--is--is--is there!" pointing to the dead man.