Randall Byrne sat at his sentinel post with his hands folded and his
grave eyes steadily fixed before him, and for hour after hour he did not
move. Though the wind rose, now and again, and whistled through the
upper chambers or mourned down the empty halls, Randall Byrne did not
stir so much as an eyelash in observance. Two things held him
fascinated. One was the girl who had passed up yonder stairs so wearily
without a single backward glance at him; the other was the silent battle
which went on in the adjoining room. Now and then his imagination
wandered away to secondary pictures. He would see Barry meeting Buck
Daniels, at last, and striking him down as remorselessly as the hound
strikes the hare; or he would see him riding back towards Elkhead and
catch a bright, sad vision of Kate Cumberland waving a careless adieu to
him, and then hear her singing carelessly as she turned away. Such
pictures as these, however, came up but rarely in the mind of Byrne.
Mostly he thought of the stranger leaning over the body of old Joe
Cumberland, reviving him, storing him with electric energy, paying back,
as it were, some ancient debt. And he thought of the girl as she had
turned at the landing place of the stairs, her head fallen; and he
thought of her lying in her bed, with her arm under the mass of bright
hair, trying to sleep, very tired, but remorsely held awake by that same
power which was bringing Joe Cumberland back from the verge of death.
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