The sounds of the night came to him with painful
distinctness--the crackling of the fire, the serpent-like hiss of the
flaming pitch, the whispering of the tree tops, and the steady tick,
tick, tick of Conniston's watch. And out on the barren, through the rim
of sheltering trees, the wind was beginning to moan its everlasting
whimper and sob of loneliness. In spite of his clenched hands and his
fighting determination to hold it off, Keith fancied that he heard
again--riding strangely in that wind--the sound of Conniston's voice.
And suddenly he asked himself: What did it mean? What was it that
Conniston had forgotten? What was it that Conniston had been trying to
tell him all that day, when he had felt the presence of him in the
gloom of the Barrens? Was it that Conniston wanted him to come back?
He tried to rid himself of the depressing insistence of that thought.
And yet he was certain that in the last half-hour before death entered
the cabin the Englishman had wanted to tell him something and had
crucified the desire. There was the triumph of an iron courage in those
last words, "Remember, old chap, you win or lose the moment McDowell
first sets his eyes on you!"--but in the next instant, as death sent
home its thrust, Keith had caught a glimpse of Conniston's naked soul,
and in that final moment when speech was gone forever, he knew that
Conniston was fighting to make his lips utter words which he had left
unspoken until too late.
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