"What is it? Murfree off again?"
"Yes," walking beside the boy as he led his wheel on a detour around the group. "Off forever, poor fellow! They were trying to keep him on the bed when he 'cullopsed,' they tell me."
The word had impressed Dalton, and he could not refrain from using it himself, smiling over it in the darkness. But Dan did not notice.
"I oughtn't to have left him, but I got so down-hearted I had to. Come around through my room, and we can get in without forcing this crowd. I want to put up my bike."
They were soon in the apartment which Murfree had occupied, just across from the cobbler's. Dr. Browne stood over the bed, and had the two watchers guarding the door to keep out the frankly-curious people without. They thronged up to its lintels just as the surf presses against the dykes, that are the doors of the land, to guard it from that strange old sea which would learn all its secrets, only to obliterate them. The doctor looked up. "He is resting at last," he said in brusque fashion, "and a good thing for everybody. Did you ever see this mark on him, Dan? Regular tatooing, isn't it?"
They both examined the bare shoulder, and, on its curve into the arm, observed the red and blue marking, plainly defined on the white skin. A circle formed of twisted snakes, head to head and with tails intertwined, enclosed a monogram, apparently, but the letters were not English in character, and so intermingled that none of the three could separate them.
"I've seen that, or what's just like it," said Dan hurriedly. "It's stamped on some papers he give me to keep once, when he was himself for a few minutes. He said, if he died I might open 'em, and they'd secure justice. He didn't say justice to who. Then he went off again, mumbling and muttering. I never could find out just what he wanted me to do with 'em."
"We'll look into that," said Dalton, who had his own ideas concerning the dead man. "We can't do any more here, doctor?"
"No. I'll turn him over to these boys, now. They know what to do; and I've got to go back to Jim Dodge's to-night. His little girl's down with measles—severe case."
Dalton busied himself for a few moments with Murfree's effects, then, beckoning Dan, they went back into the lad's room at the rear.