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He was still in this attitude when Zuleika left him. The wind crooned over him confidentially, but he still sat there, given up apparently to some posthumous enjoyment of his visitor’s departing witticism.

It was scarcely daylight when Zuleika, while dressing, heard a quick tapping upon her shutter. She opened it to the scared and bewildered face of her brother.

“What happened with her and father last night?” he said hoarsely.

“Nothing–why?”

“Read that. It was brought to me half an hour ago by a man in dad’s sleigh, from the stage station.”

He handed her a crumpled note with trembling fingers. She took it and read:–

“The game’s up and I’m out of it! Take my advice and clear out of it too, until you can come back in better shape. Don’t be such a fool as to try and follow me. Your father isn’t one, and that’s where you’ve slipped up.”

“He shall pay for it, whatever he’s done,” said her brother with an access of wild passion. “Where is he?”

“Why, Jack, you wouldn’t dare to see him now?”

“Wouldn’t I?” He turned and ran, convulsed with passion, before the windows towards the front of the house. Zuleika slipped out of her bedroom and ran to her father’s room. He was not there. Already she could hear her brother hammering frantically against the locked front door.

The door of the office was partly open. Her father was still there. Asleep? Yes, for he had apparently sunk forward before the cold hearth. But the hands that he had always been trying to warm were colder than the hearth or ashes, and he himself never again spoke nor stirred.

*****

It was deemed providential by the neighbors that his youngest and favorite son, alarmed by news of his father’s failing health, had arrived from the Atlantic States just at the last moment. But it was thought singular that after the division of the property he entirely abandoned the Ranch, and that even pending the division his beautiful but fastidious Eastern bride declined to visit it with her husband.