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"Oh, master, we shall see the patriarch soon?" asked Brely loud, in the clear air of night upon the surface of the world "Soon shall we speak with hi, the while he gripped his pistol tighter

Froue, dull roar h the forest

Sonorous, vibrant, ain, as once before, Stern heard that strange, hollow boohty drum struck by a muffled fist

A cry? Was that a cry, so distant and so faint? Beast-cry, or call of night-bird, shrill and far?

Stern shuddered, and with redoubled haste once ue path he and Beatrice had made from the barrens to Settlement Miffs

Presently, followed by the two colonists who dared not let hiht, he reached the brow of the canyon His hand flash-lah path to the terrace

With fast-beating heart he ran down it, une or the sheer drop to the rocks of New Hope River, far below

Breloom, hurried close behind, ords of aonder and adain!" Stern shouted triuain!"

Quickly he scra in his haste over loose rocks and debris Now he had reached the turn The fire was in sight

"Beta!" again he hailed "O-he! Beatrice!"

Still no answer, nor any sign fro e embers

Only one or two resinous knots still flamed It could not have been replenished for soain, his quick eye caught the fact that cinders, ashes and half-burned sticks lay scattered about in strange disorder

"Why, Beatrice never h his rounds--a quick prescience of catastrophe battered at his heart

"What's this?"

Soht his eye He snatched it up

"What--what can thisat hilow, as he studied the thing he now held in his hand, must have been very terrible

"Cloth! Torn! But--but then--"

He flung froirl's cloak which, ripped and shredded as though by a powerful hand, cried disaster