Under the rock wall, they found a man, dead on his knees, leaning against the wall; his gun, still cocked and deadly, was resting against his shoulder and needing only the movement of a finger to sweep with deadly hail the cotton-bales. His scraggy hair topped the rock fence and his staring eyes peeped over, each its own way. And one of them looked forward into a future which was Silence, and the other looked backward into a past which was Sin.
CHAPTER XXV
THE SHADOWS AND THE CLOUDS
When Richard Travis came to himself after that terrible night, they told him that for weeks he had lain with only a breath between him and death.
“It was not my skill that has saved you,” said the old surgeon who had been through two wars and who knew wounds as he did maps of battlefields he had fought on. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “no, it was not I—it was something beyond me. That you miraculously live is proof of it.”
He was in his room at The Gaffs, and everything looked so natural. It was sweet to live again, for he was yet young and life now meant so much more than it ever had. Then his eyes fell on the rug, wearily, and he remembered the old setter.
“The dog—and that other one?”