THE HAUNTING OF A CRIME Murphy rested on his back in the midst of a thicket of willows, wide awake, yet not quite ready to ford the Fourche and plunge into the dense shadows shrouding the northern shore.

Crouched behind a log, he had so far yielded unto temptation as to light his pipe.
Murphy had been amid just such unpleasant environments many times before, and the experience had grown somewhat prosaic.

He realized fully the imminent peril haunting the next two hundred miles, but such danger was not wholly unwelcome to his peculiar temperament; rather it was an incentive to him, and, without a doubt, he would manage to pull through somehow, as he had done a hundred times before.

Even Indian-scouting degenerates into a commonplace at last.

So Murphy puffed contentedly at his old pipe.