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Before the echoes of the report died away, McCloud’s voice was heard again, calmly warning them back.

Something in his voice arrested the general advance.

“I don’t know why I don’t kill you in your tracks, Byram,” said McCloud; “I’ve wanted the excuse often enough. But now I’ve got it and I don’t want it, somehow. Let me alone, I tell you.”

“He’s no good!” said the warden, distinctly. Byram crept through the picket fence and lay close, hugging his shot-gun.

“I tell you I intend to pay my taxes,” cried McCloud, desperately. “Don’t force me to shoot!”

The sullen rage was rising; he strove to crush it back, to think of the little path-master.

“For God’s sake, go back!” he pleaded, hoarsely.

Suddenly Byram started running towards the house, and McCloud clapped his rifle to his cheek and fired. Four flashes from the road answered his shot, but Byram was down in the grass screaming, and McCloud had vanished into his house.

Charge after charge of buckshot tore through the flimsy clapboards; the moonlight was brightened by pale flashes, and the timbered hills echoed the cracking shots.

After a while no more shots were fired, and presently a voice broke out in the stillness:

“Be yew layin’ low, or be yew dead, Dan McCloud?”

There was no answer.

“Or be yew playin’ foxy possum,” continued the voice, with nasal rising inflection.

Byram began to groan and crawl towards the road.

“Let him alone,” he moaned; “let him alone. He’s got grit, if he hain’t got nothin’ else.”

“Air yew done for?” demanded Tansey, soberly.

“No, no,” groaned Byram, “I’m jest winged. He done it, an’ he was right. Didn’t he say he’d pay his taxes? He’s plumb right. Let him alone, or he’ll come out an’ murder us all!”

Byram’s voice ceased; Tansey mounted the dark slope, peering among the brambles, treading carefully.

“Whar be ye, Byram?” he bawled.

But it was ten minutes before he found the young man, quite dead, in the long grass.

With an oath Tansey flung up his gun and drove a charge of buckshot crashing through the front door. The door quivered; the last echoes of the shot died out; silence followed.

Then the shattered door swung open slowly, and McCloud reeled out, still clutching his rifle. He tried to raise it; he could not, and it fell clattering. Tansey covered him with his shot-gun, cursing him fiercely. “Up with them hands o’ yourn!” he snarled; but McCloud only muttered and began to rock and sway in the doorway.

Tansey came up to him, shot-gun in hand. “Yew hev done fur Byram,” he said; “yew air bound to set in the chair for this.”

McCloud, leaning against the sill, looked at him with heavy eyes.

“It’s well enough for you,” he muttered; “you are only a savage; but Byram went to college–and so did I–and we are nothing but savages like you, after all–nothing but savages–“

He collapsed and slid to the ground, lying hunched up across the threshold.

“I want to see the path-master!” he cried, sharply.

A shadow fell across the shot riddled door snow-white in the moonshine.

“She’s here,” said the game-warden, soberly.

But McCloud had started talking and muttering to himself.

Towards midnight the whippoorwill began a breathless calling from the garden.

McCloud opened his eyes.

“Who is that?” he asked, irritably.

“He’s looney,” whispered Tansey; “he gabbles to hisself.”

The little path-master knelt beside him. He stared at her stonily.

“It is I,” she whispered.

“Is it you, little path-master?” he said, in an altered voice. Then something came into his filmy eyes which she knew was a smile.

“I wanted to tell you,” he began, “I will work out my taxes–somewhere–for you–“

The path-master hid her white face in her hands. Presently the collie dog came and laid his head on her shoulder.