The carbine fell from Durham's hands and he stood motionless, looking down at the figure from which all signs of life had gone.
As quickly as it had come the paroxysm of rage left him.
The man was dying, if not dead, and the hideous riddle of the mystery still unsolved!
He must not die! He must not pass beyond the reach of human knowledge with the truth of that tragic drama in which he had played the leading part unrevealed.
Durham rushed to the pool, filled his cap with water and came back with it. Lifting up the drooping head, he moistened the nerveless lips and bathed the cold temples and pallid cheeks.
"In the—cave—rum."
The whisper was just loud enough for him to hear. Leaning the head once more against the stone, Durham staggered to the cave. A dark heap lay on the ground in the shadow. He struck a match.
Numbed as his brain was by the revelation that had come to him, he shrank back at what he saw.
A pile of woman's clothes; the skirt and jacket which had been impressed upon his memory only a few hours before under circumstances which form, perhaps, the one occasion when a man heeds and remembers what a woman wears; the jaunty hat which had exerted so great a spell upon the masculine population of the district, and beside it, the most horrible of all, a wig of luxuriant coal-black hair from which the subtle perfume that had so often charmed him still floated.
With hands which shook so that he could scarcely hold it, he took the bottle of rum, bearing Soden's label, from the ground beside the clothes, and hastened to the mouth of the cave.