In place of that sympathy the oppression of a thing that was greater than disappointment settled upon him heavily, driving from him his own personal dread of this night's ghastly adventure, and adding to his suspense of the last forty-eight hours a hopelessness the poignancy of which was almost like that of a physical pain.

Tavish was dead, and in dying he had taken with him the secret for which David would have paid with all he was worth in this hour.

In his despair, as he stood there alone in the cabin, he muttered something to himself.

The desire possessed him to cry out aloud that Tavish had cheated him.

A strange kind of rage burned within him and he turned toward the door, with clenched hands, as if about to rush out and choke from the dead man's throat what he wanted to know, and force his glazed and staring eyes to look for just one instant on the face of the girl in the picture.