HE rapidly overtook a bent and doggedly tramping figure; no common wanderer, he recognized, as he drew nearer. The others decent suit was eminently presentable, his felt hat brushed, his shoes comparatively new. He turned upon Anthony a countenance as expressionless, as darkly-stained, as a chipped and rusted effigy of iron; deep lines fell back across the dingy cheeks; his lipless mouth was, apparently, another such line; and his eyes, deeply sunk in the skull, were the eyes of a dead man. Yet they were not blind; they saw.

He halted, and surveyed Anthony with a lowered, searching curiosity, clenching with a strained and surprising force the knob of a black stick. Anthony met his scrutiny with the salutation of youth and the road; but the other made no reply; his countenance was as blank as though no word had been spoken. Then a sudden flicker of hot light burned in the dull depths of his gaze, his worn face quivered with a swift malignancy, an energy of suspicion, of hatred, that touched Anthony's heart with a cold finger of fear.

“What's your name?” he demanded, his entire being strained in an agony of attention.

Anthony informed him with scrupulous exactitude.

He seemed, for a moment, to doubt Anthony's identity; then the fire died, his eyes grew blank; his grasp relaxed on the stick, and, bent, dogged, he continued on his way.

The repellent contraction of Anthony's heart expanded in a light and careless curiosity, youthful contempt mingled with the gayety of his morning mood, and he hastened his steps until he had again overtaken his inquisitor.

“That's a good cane you've got,” he observed of the stout shaft and rounded head.

Its owner grasped it by the lower end, and swung the head against his hand. “Lead,” he pronounced somberly. “It would crumble your skull like an egg.”

Again fear stirred vaguely in Anthony: the entire absence of emotion in the sanguinary, the dull, matter-of-fact voice were inhuman, tainted with madness; the total detachment of those deliberate words had been appalling.

“I thought,” he continued, “that you might have been Alfred Lukes, but you're too young.” As he pronounced that name his grasp tightened whitely about the lead knob. The conviction seized Anthony that it was fortunate he was not the individual in question.

“You want Alfred?” he asked in an attempted jocularity.

“He murdered my boy,” the other answered simply. “Him and another. They asked James into a boat to go fishing. Boys will always go fishing; he was only eleven.” He stopped in the middle of the road, and produced a small package folded in oiled silk. It proved to be a derringer, of an old-fashioned model, with two, short black barrels, one atop the other. “Loaded,” he said, “to put against his face.” Then he rewrapped the weapon and returned it to its place of concealment. “I've been looking for Alfred Lukes for nineteen years,” he recommenced his dogged progress, “in trains and saloons and stores. Nineteen years ago James was found in the river.” He was silent for a moment, then, “One eye was torn out,” he added in his weary voice. He turned his blank and terrible gaze upon Anthony, upon the sparkling morning. The derringer dragged slightly upon his coat, the stick—that stick which could crush a skull like an egg—made its trailing signature in the dust. A mingled loathing and pity took possession of Anthony; he recoiled from the corroding and secret horror of that nineteen year Odyssey of a torturing and impotent spirit of revenge, from the infinite black tide that had swept over the stooping figure at his side, the pitiless memory that had destroyed its sanity.

“It was on Sunday; James had on his nice blue suit and a new, red silk necktie... they found it knotted about his throat... as tight as a big man could make it.”

A sudden impulse overcame Anthony to run, to leave far behind him this sinister, animated speck on the sunny road, under the dusty branches burdened with ripening fruit, thrilling with the bubbling notes of birds. But, as his gaze fell again upon his companion, he saw only an old man, gaunt with suffering, hurrying toward the noon. A deep, cleansing compassion vanquished the dread, and, spontaneously, he spoke of his own lighter affairs, of California, his destination.

“I have never been west of Chicago,” the other interposed. “I hadn't the money; the walking is dreadfully hard; the sun on those plains hurt my head. Do you suppose James Lukes is in California?” he asked, pausing momentarily in his rapid shamble.

In his careless, youthful egotism, Anthony ignored the query. He wondered aloud where he could board a through train to the West.

“Have you got your ticket?”

Anthony tapped complacently upon the pocket that held the wallet. They were walking now through a wood that flowed to the rim of the road, and a turn hid either vista. A stream ran through the rank greenery of the bottom, crossed by a bridge of loosely bolted planks. Anthony paused, intent upon the brown, sliding water beneath him, the minute minnows balancing against the stream. In that closed place of broken light the cool stillness was profound. The stream fled past its weeds without a gurgle, the leaves hung motionless, as though they had been stamped from metal... he might have been, with his companion, within a charmed circle of everlasting tranquillity. Then:

“I wonder if Alfred Lukes is in California?” the latter resumed; “I've never got there, the fare... too expensive, the sun hurt my head.” Anthony lit a Dulcina, and expelled a cloud of blue smoke that rose compactly in the motionless air. “California,” he repeated, sunk in thought; “I wonder—”

“California's a big place,” Anthony hazarded.

“If he was there I'd find him.” Then, in his mechanical and dispassionate voice, he cursed Alfred Lukes with the utmost foulness. One heated word, the slightest elevation of his even tones, would have made the performance human, intelligent, but the deadly monotony, the impersonal accents, were as harrowing as though a mummy had ground out of its shrunken and embalmed interior a recital of prehistoric hatred and wrong; it resembled a phonograph record of incalculable depravity. He stood beyond the bridge, resting upon his stick, with his unmoved face turned toward Anthony. His hat cast a deep shade over his eyes; but, below, in a wanton patch of sunlight, his lipless mouth trembled greyly.

“California,” he repeated still again, then, “I must get there.” He shifted his hand lower upon the stick, and moved nearer to Anthony by a step; the patch of sunlight shifted up to his hat and fled.

“You could try the freight cars,” Anthony suggested. The stooping, neatly-brushed figure, the stony countenance, had become, in an intangible manner, menacing, obscurely dangerous. The fingers were drawn like a claw about the club. Then the arm relaxed, he seemed to shrink into hopeless resignation. Beyond the leafy arcade Anthony could now see the countryside spread out in sunny fields, fleecy, white clouds shifting in the sea of blue.... Suddenly a great flame shot up before his eyes, a stunning shock fell upon his head, and the flame went out in a whirling darkness that swept like a black sea over a continent of intolerable pain. He heard, as if from an immense distance, a thin voice pronounce the single word, “California.”