wind one Sunday night just at even-tide. Jim watched the sails away out toward Sledge Island, then he turned slowly toward the lonely home, left on the shore. Kittick could hear the splash of the oars, and she whispered "by-and-bye, tomorrow," and we knew she thought he would come.

Little Kittick! She didn't know. No one taught her. She only knew the sea, the ice-bergs and the mud hut. To eat fish, to drink seal oil, to tell stories over the feeble fire, and to fall asleep, that was all. The day had nothing new, and often she was cold and shivering.

AND.

Everywhere dazzling, white and glaring hot sand, smoothly level for little distances, then billowing softly in breast-like mounds. But always the same blinding white stretch; no cactus, no bunch-grass-just sand. And a brassy-blue sky-ring with a setting of

copper sun, blazing infernally.

The American spoke first.

"Well, you've got me dead to rights, out here. What are you going to do about it?"

The Mexican's only reply was to point silently ahead. His big jaw was set immovably and his heavy eye-lids drooped over a gaze colder than ice. His companion watched him, furtively, in growing apprehension.

Since dawn they had ridden over maddening miles of this interminable desert. without the exchange of a single word. The American's pride of race in not "knuckling" to a damned "Greaser" by speaking first had been gradually but inexorably borne down in part by the terrifying stillness and monotony of this blistered waste, but much more by the unnatural silence and immobility main

tained by the other. He had always reckoned himself a fairly brave man, but the uncanniness of the whole situation was getting upon his nerves.

What a fool he had been to ride out, absolutely unarmed, into this pale sea with this granite-faced devil. He felt, savagely, that he would give all he possessed to mash that grim mouth, to crush the light from those narrow, steely eyes. Presently he began to speak rapidly, thickly, as one hurried on by an uncontrollable something apart from himself.

"Look here, now, damn you. I know that I kept after the girl until she gave in to me. But how was I going to know that she would kill herself because I had to go away? Of course, I knew you loved her, but I didn't see any reason for that stopping me. Oh, I know you'd have married her, where I couldn't; but that's just the point, I couldn't. I'm engaged to a girl up in Nevada, and all my prospects depend upon my marrying her; so you see how I was placed, don't you?"

The Mexican gave no sign that he had heard. His left hand, holding the thin reins that ran to the dejected mouth of the weary mustang, rested on the high pommel of the "buck" saddle; and his right hand clasped, with quiet significance, the butt of the heavy revolver in its stamped-leather holster. Not a muscle of his face relaxed its fixed strain. It made the American's jaws ache to look at him.

He waited, mechanically, for the answer he knew would not come; then burst out again in a frenzied effort to batter down the stony ramparts of the other's deadly silence.

"You hound, you! You'd have done the same thing in my place. You'd have done worse if you could. Why don't you say something, you dirty Greaser dog? You're a filthy coward! Get down off that horse and fight me like a man. No. of course you won't. Ugh! What a beautiful fool I was to think that you would help me to get away from her relatives. You would show me a safe way across the desert and over the frontier, would you? Yes, you would. Like H! Yah! You dog, you!

What I want to know is,

what are you going to do with me? Answer me that. Answer me. What are you going to do with me? Hey? SAY some-thing, can't you! SAY SOMETHING."

His voice had climaxed to a furious yell; but now he fell quiet suddenly, watching with fascinated eyes the phlegmatic mask of the utterly unmoved Mexican. His burst of rage had been but a sorry cloak for the cold terror that was clutching at his heart. He realized this with increasing alarm; and worsehe knew that the Mexican knew it. In spite of the terrific heat his face and hands were clammy cold, and he shivered fitfully.

They rode on through the long after noon in silence that was unbroken for the muffled shuffling of the mustangs' feet in the pillowy sand. The American had fallen into a dull apathy, and rode like a sick man, his head drooping lollingly upon his breast. The Mexican did not change his attitude by so much as a hair: riding erect and elastic, his face-a stone, and his eyes-ice.

Presently the sun dropped abruptly over the far edge of the sand-bank, and there succeeded a brief twilight of the blanched grayness of death. The Mexican swung himself lightly from the sad. dle and with a gesture to his companion to do likewise began to loosen the "bellyband" from his sweating mustang. This new move was viewed by the American with quick suspicion and alarm; but, seeing that no immediate danger was imminent he alighted slowly on the further side from his fellow traveler, and cautiously unsaddled his animal. The Mexican, in the meantime, had staked out his horse with his riata, and was now busying himself with the preparation of some coffee over a small spirit-lamp. When this was done he spread a blanket upon the sand, and motioning the other to be seated opposite, they ate a slender meal of crackers and canned cornedbeef, washed down with the steaming coffee, and topped off with a sparing drink from their water-pottles

Dinner over, the Mexican stretched himself at ease upon the blanket, with a brown paper cigarette between his slen

der fingers; fixing the American, between the smoke-wreaths, with a sustained, impersonal regard under which the latter soon found his eye-ids drooping with irritating persistency. The significance of this over-mastering drowsiness did not dawn upon him until, in a moment when he had wrenched his gaze from that impenetrable, idol-mask of a face opposite, with the cigarette smoke curling about it like streamers of incense, his eyes fell upon the other's tin coffe-cup. It was full. In the act of rising to shake off the deadly lethargy which was overcoming him, he swayed unsteadily for a moment, and then fell heavily back up on the blanket.

When the American next opened his eyes, his gaze rested on a strange sight. Far down near the horizon's rim a cold, glittering moon was flashing a pale radiance over a frozen white sea. At least this was the first impression on his confused senses, from which the numbing effects of the drug he had swallowed had not yet disappeared. The weird appearance of the desert was further heightened to him by the fact that his eyes were nearly on a level with the sandy surface; and he had much the feeling that a swimmer in a heavy sea, and out of sight of land, might experience.

His gaze roamed dully over the bleak expanse, and finally rested on a dark blotch a few yards in front of him.

He watched it in a puzzled way, his fogged mind struggling vaguely to shake itself clear of the mist-weight that lay upon it. Suddenly the blotch stirred, and the marble face of the Mexican gleamed like a white cameo in the moonlight. Recollection and physical sensation returned to the American in a bound. His muscles tautened in their preliminary to attempted movement, but his frame refused to respond. His glance

darted downward and encountered-sand. He was buried to his neck.

In an ecstacy of madness and frenzied terror he strained every muscle, nerve and fibre of his imprisoned body until the blood literally burst from his nose and mouth. It was useless. He was as immovably fixed as if he had been in a bed of cement. Then he raised his bloodshot eyes in mute questioning to the silent figure seated in the moonlight. The response came quickly.

The Mexican rose deliberately, and releasing the re-saddled horses from their tether, he led them in front or the helpless captive and stood for a moment looking coldly and speculatively down upon him. Then his face seemed to break up as a mirror is starred in breaking, and he smiled a frosty, devilishly malignant smile. Still smiling, he drew from his saddle-bag a paper-wrapped parcel. Carefully unrolling this, he disclosed an open book which he deposited face downward upon the sand immediately beneath the American's eyes. The printed space was heavily blacked over with ink, all but one line, and this stood out, easily readable in the dazzling light from the desert moon.

The line ran: "Ocho por ocho, O'Dente por dente." (An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.)

The unhappy American was quick to grasp it all.

He ran his glance to the top of the page: "Del Nueva Testamento."

The Mexican mounted his horse and grasped the reins of the companion animal. His smile had broadened and there was cool amusement in his eye.

"What you call-ah-some Screepture -No?" he said gaily. Then leading the American's mustang, and without one backward glance, he rode placidly back in the direction from which they had come.