a dun pony ambled along the pine-needle-carpeted trail leading through the forest toward camilla van arsdale's camp, comfortably shaded against the ardent power of the january sun. behind sounded a soft, rapid padding of hooves. the pony shied to the left with a violence which might have unseated a less practiced rider, as, with a wild whoop, dutch pete came by at full gallop. pete had been to a dance at the sick coyote on the previous night which had imperceptibly merged itself into the present morning, and had there imbibed enough of the spirit of the occasion to last him his fifteen miles home to his ranch. now he pulled up and waited for the slower rider to overtake him.

"howdy, ban!"

"hello, pete."

"how's the lady gettin' on?"

"not too well."

"can't see much of anythin', huh?"

"no: and never will again."

"sho! well, i don't figger out as i'd want to live long in that fix. how long does the doc give her, ban?"

"perhaps six months; perhaps a year. she isn't afraid to die; but she's hanging to life just as long as she can. she's a game one, pete."

"and how long will you be with us, ban?"

"oh, i'm likely to be around quite a while yet."

dutch pete, thoroughly understanding, reflected that here was another game one. but he remarked only that he'd like to drop in on miss k'miller next time he rode over, with a bit of sage honey that he'd saved out for her.

"she'll be glad to see you," returned the other. "only, don't forget, pete; not a word about anything except local stuff."

"sure!" agreed pete with that unquestioning acceptance of another's reasons for secrecy which marks the frontiersman. "say, ban," he added, "you ain't much of an advertisement for manzanita as a health resort, yourself. better have that doc stick his head in your mouth and look at your insides."

banneker raised tired eyes and smiled. "oh, i'm all right," he replied listlessly.

"come to next saturday's dance at the coyote; that'll put dynamite in your blood," prescribed the other as he spurred his horse on.

banneker had no need to turn the dun pony aside to the branch trail that curved to the door of his guest; the knowing animal took it by habitude, having traversed it daily for a long time. it was six months since banneker had bought him: six months and a week since willis enderby had been buried. and the pony's rider had in his pocket a letter, of date only four days old, from willis enderby to camilla van arsdale. it was dated from the governor's mansion, albany, new york. banneker had written it himself, the night before. he had also composed nearly a column of supposed amalgamated wire report, regarding the fight for and against governor enderby's reform measures, which he would read presently to miss van arsdale from the dailies just received. as he dismounted, the clear music of her voice called:

"any mail, ban?"

"yes. letter from albany."

"let me open it myself," she cried jealously.

he delivered it into her hands: this was part of the ritual. she ran her fingers caressingly over it, as if to draw from it the hidden sweetness of her lover's strength, which must still be only half-expressed, because the words were to be translated through another's reading; then returned it to its real author.

"read it slowly, ban," she commanded softly.

having completed the letter, his next process was to run through the papers, giving in full any news or editorials on state politics. this was a task demanding the greatest mental concentration and alertness, for he had built up a contemporary history out of his imagination, and must keep all the details congruous and logical. several times, with that uncanny retentiveness of memory developed in the blind, she had all but caught him; but each time his adroitness saved the day. later, while he was at work in the room which she had set aside for his daily writing, she would answer the letter on the typewriter, having taught herself to write by position and touch, and he would take her reply for posting. her nurse and companion, an elderly woman with a natural aptitude for silence and discretion, was banneker's partner in the secret. the third member of the conspiracy was the physician who came once a week from angelica city because he himself was a musician and this slowly and courageously dying woman was royce melvin. between them they hedged her about with the fiction that victoriously defied grief and defeated death.

camilla van arsdale got up from her couch and walked with confident footsteps to the piano.

"ban," she said, seating herself and letting her fingers run over the keys, "can't you substitute another word for 'muffled' in the third line? it comes on a high note--upper g--and i want a long, not a short vowel sound."

"how would 'silenced' do?" he offered, after studying the line.

"beautifully. you're a most amiable poet! ban, i think your verses are going to be more famous than my music."

"never that," he denied. "it's the music that makes them."

"have you heard from mr. gaines yet about the essays?"

"yes. he's taking them. he wants to print two in each issue and call them 'far perspectives.'"

"oh, good!" she cried. "but, ban, fine as your work is, it seems a terrible waste of your powers to be out here. you ought to be in new york, helping the governor put through his projects."

"well, you know, the doctor won't give me my release."

(presently he must remember to have a coughing spell. he coughed hollowly and well, thanks to assiduous practice. this was part of the grim and loving comedy of deception: that he had been peremptorily ordered back to manzanita on account of "weak lungs," with orders to live in his open shack until he had gained twenty pounds. he was gaining, but with well-considered slowness.)

"but when you can, you'll go back and help him, even if i'm not here to know about it, won't you?"

"oh, yes: i'll go back to help him when i can," he promised, as heartily as if he had not made the same promise each time that the subject came up. there was still a good deal of the wistful child about the dying woman.

out from that forest hermitage where the two worked, one in serene though longing happiness, the other under the stern discipline of loss and self-abnegation, had poured, in six short months, a living current of song which had lifted the fame of royce melvin to new heights: her fame only, for banneker would not use his name to the words that rang with a pure and vivid melody of their own. herein, too, he was paying his debt to willis enderby, through the genius of the woman who loved him; preserving that genius with the thin, lustrous, impregnable fiction of his own making against threatening and impotent truth.

once, when banneker had brought her a lyric, alive with the sweetness of youth and love in the great open spaces, she had said:

"ban, shall we call it 'io?'"

"i don't think it would do," he said with an effort.

"where is she?"

"traveling in the tropics."

"you try so hard to keep the sadness out of your voice when you speak of her," said camilla sorrowfully. "but it's always there. isn't there anything i can do?"

"nothing. there's nothing anybody can do."

the blind woman hesitated. "but you care for her still, don't you, ban?"

"care! oh, my god!" whispered banneker.

"and she cares. i know she cared when she was here. io isn't the kind of woman to forget easily. she tried once, you know." miss van arsdale smiled wanly. "why doesn't she ever say anything of you in her letters?"

"she does."

"very little." (io's letters, passing through banneker's hands were carefully censored, of necessity, to forefend any allusion to the tragedy of willis enderby, often to the extent of being rewritten complete. it now occurred to banneker that he had perhaps overdone the matter of keeping his own name out of them.) "ban," she continued wistfully, "you haven't quarreled, have you?"

"no, miss camilla. we haven't quarreled."

"then _what_ is it, ban? i don't want to pry; you know me well enough to be sure of that. but if i could only know before the end comes that you two--i wish i could read your face. it's a helpless thing, being blind." this was as near a complaint as he had ever heard her utter.

"io's a rich woman, miss camilla," he said desperately.

"what of it?"

"how could i ask her to marry a jobless, half-lunged derelict?"

"_have_ you asked her?"

he was silent.

"ban, does she know why you're here?"

"oh, yes; she knows."

"how bitter and desolate your voice sounds when you say that! and you want me to believe that she knows and still doesn't come to you?"

"she doesn't know that i'm--ill," he said, hating himself for the necessity of pretense with camilla van arsdale.

"then i shall tell her."

"no," he controverted with finality, "i won't allow it."

"suppose it turned out that this were really the right path for you to travel," she said after a pause; "that you were going to do bigger things here than you ever could do with the patriot? i believe it's going to be so, ban; that what you are doing now is going to be your true success."

"success!" he cried. "are you going to preach success to me? if ever there was a word coined in hell--i'm sorry, miss camilla," he broke off, mastering himself.

she groped her way to the piano, and ran her fingers over the keys. "there is work, anyway," she said with sure serenity.

"yes; there's work, thank god!"

work enough there was for him, not only in his writing, for which he had recovered the capacity after a long period of stunned inaction, but in the constant and unwearied labor of love in building and rebuilding, fortifying and extending, that precarious but still impregnable bulwark of falsehood beneath whose protection camilla van arsdale lived and was happy and made the magic of her song. illusion! banneker wondered whether any happiness were other than illusion, whether the illusion of happiness were not better than any reality. but in the world of grim fact which he had accepted for himself was no palliating mirage. upon him "the illusive eyes of hope" were closed.

while banneker was practicing his elaborate deceptions, miss van arsdale had perpetrated a lesser one of her own, which she had not deemed it wise to reveal to him in their conversation about io. some time before that she had written to her former guest a letter tactfully designed to lay a foundation for resolving the difficulty or misunderstanding between the lovers. in the normal course of events this would have been committed for mailing to banneker, who would, of course, have confiscated it. but, as it chanced, it was hardly off the typewriter when dutch pete dropped in for a friendly call while banneker was at the village, and took the missive with him for mailing. it traveled widely, amassed postmarks and forwarding addresses, and eventually came to its final port.

worn out with the hopeless quest of forgetfulness in far lands, io eyre came back to new york. it was there that the long pursuit of her by camilla van arsdale's letter ended. bewilderment darkened io's mind as she read, to be succeeded by an appalled conjecture; camilla van arsdale's mind had broken down under her griefs. what other hypothesis could account for her writing of willis enderby as being still alive? and of her having letters from him? to the appeal for banneker which, concealed though it was, underlay the whole purport of the writing, io closed her heart, seared by the very sight of his name. she would have torn the letter up, but something impelled her to read it again; some hint of a pregnant secret to be gleaned from it, if one but held the clue. hers was a keen and thoughtful mind. she sent it exploring through the devious tangle of the maze wherein she and banneker, camilla van arsdale and willis enderby had been so tragically involved, and as she patiently studied the letter as possible guide there dawned within her a glint of the truth. it began with the suspicion, soon growing to conviction, that the writer of those inexplicable words was not, could not be insane; the letter breathed a clarity of mind, an untroubled simplicity of heart, a quiet undertone of happiness, impossible to reconcile with the picture of a shattered and grief-stricken victim. yet io had, herself, written to miss van arsdale as soon as she knew of judge enderby's death, pouring out her heart for the sorrow of the woman who as a stranger had stood her friend, whom, as she learned to know her in the close companionship of her affliction, she had come to love; offering to return at once to manzanita. to that offer had come no answer; later she had had a letter curiously reticent as to willis enderby. (banneker, in his epistolary personification of miss van arsdale had been perhaps overcautious on this point.) io began to piece together hints and clues, as in a disjected puzzle:--banneker's presence in manzanita--camilla's blindness.--her inability to know, except through the medium of others, the course of events.--the bewildering reticence and hiatuses in the infrequent letters from manzanita, particularly in regard to willis enderby.--this calm, sane, cheerful view of him as a living being, a present figure in his old field of action.--the casual mention in an early letter that all of miss van arsdale's reading and most of her writing was done through the nurse or banneker, mainly the latter, though she was mastering the art of touch-writing on the typewriter. the very style of the earlier letters, as she remembered them, was different. and just here flashed the thought which set her feverishly ransacking the portfolio in which she kept her old correspondence. there she found an envelope with a manzanita postmark dated four months earlier. the typing of the two letters was not the same.

groping for some aid in the murk, io went to the telephone and called up the editorial office of the sphere, asking for russell edmonds. within two hours the veteran had come to her.

"i have been wanting to see you," he said at once.

"about mr. banneker?" she queried eagerly.

"no. about the searchlight."

"the searchlight? i don't understand, mr. edmonds."

"can't we be open with each other, mrs. eyre?"

"absolutely, so far as i am concerned."

"then i want to tell you that you need have no fear as to what the searchlight may do."

"still i don't understand. why should i fear it?"

"the scandal--manufactured, of course--which the searchlight had cooked up about you and mr. banneker before mr. eyre's death."

"surely there was never anything published. i should have heard of it."

"no; there wasn't. banneker stopped it."

"ban?"

"do you mean to say that you knew nothing of this, mrs. eyre?" he said, the wonder in his face answering the bewilderment in hers. "didn't banneker tell you?"

"never a word."

"no; i suppose he wouldn't," ruminated the veteran. "that would be like ban--the old ban," he added sadly. "mrs. eyre, i loved that boy," he broke out, his stern and somber face working. "there are times even now when i can scarcely make myself believe that he did what he did."

"wait," pleaded io. "how did he stop the searchlight?"

"by threatening bussey with an expose that would have blown him out of the water. blackmail, if you like, mrs. eyre, and not of the most polite kind."

"for me," whispered io.

"he held that old carrion-buzzard, bussey, up at the muzzle of the patriot as if it were a blunderbuss. it was loaded to kill, too. and then," pursued edmonds, "he paid the price. marrineal got out his little gun and held him up."

"held ban up? what for? how could he do that? all this is a riddle to me, mr. edmonds."

"do you think you really want to know?" asked the other with a touch of grimness. "it won't be pleasant hearing."

"i've got to know. everything!"

"very well. here's the situation. banneker points his gun, the patriot, at bussey. 'be good or i'll shoot,' he says. marrineal learns of it, never mind how. he points _his_ gun at ban. 'be good, or i'll shoot,' says he. and there you are!"

"but what was his gun? and why need he threaten ban?"

"why, you see, mrs. eyre, about that time things were coming to an issue between ban and marrineal. ban was having a hard fight for the independence of his editorial page. his strongest hold on marrineal was marrineal's fear of losing him. there were plenty of opportunities open to a banneker. well, when marrineal got ban where he couldn't resign, ban's hold was gone. that was marrineal's gun."

"why couldn't he resign?" asked io, white-lipped.

"if he quit the patriot he could no longer hold bussey, and the searchlight could print what it chose. you see?"

"i see," said io, very low. "oh, why couldn't i have seen before!"

"how could you, if ban told you nothing?" reasoned edmonds. "the blame of the miserable business isn't yours. sometimes i wonder if it's anybody's; if the newspaper game isn't just too strong for us who try to play it. as for the searchlight, i've since got another hold on bussey which will keep him from making any trouble. that's what i wanted to tell you."

"oh, what does it matter! what does it matter!" she moaned. she crossed to the window, laid her hot and white face against the cool glass, pressed her hands in upon her temples, striving to think connectedly. "then whatever he did on the patriot, whatever compromises he yielded to or--or cowardices--" she winced at the words--"were done to save his place; to save me."

"i'm afraid so," returned the other gently.

"do you know what he's doing now?" she demanded.

"i understand he's back at manzanita."

"he is. and from what i can make out," she added fiercely, "he is giving up his life to guarding miss van arsdale from breaking her heart, as she will do, if she learns of judge enderby's death--oh!" she cried, "i didn't mean to say that! you must forget that there was anything said."

"no need. i know all that story," he said gravely. "that is what i couldn't forgive in ban. that he should have betrayed miss van arsdale, his oldest friend. that is the unpardonable treachery."

"to save me," said io.

"not even for that. he owed more to her than to you."

"i can't believe that he did it!" she wailed. "to use my letter to set spies on cousin billy and ruin him--it isn't ban. it isn't!"

"he did it, and, when it was too late, he tried to stop it."

"to stop it?" she looked her startled query at him. "how do you know that?"

"last week," explained edmonds, "judge enderby's partner sent for me. he had been going over some papers and had come upon a telegram from banneker urging enderby not to leave without seeing him. the telegram must have been delivered very shortly after the judge left for the train."

"telegram? why a telegram? wasn't ban in town?"

"no. he was down in jersey. at the retreat."

"wait!" gasped io. "at the retreat! then my letter would have been forwarded to him there. he couldn't have got it at the same time that cousin billy got the one i sent him." she gripped russell edmonds's wrists in fierce, strong hands. "what if he hadn't known in time? what if, the moment he did know, he did his best to stop cousin billy from starting, with that telegram?" suddenly the light died out of her face. "but then how would that loathsome mr. ives have known that he was going, unless ban betrayed him?"

"easily enough," returned the veteran. "he had a report from his detectives, who had been watching enderby for months.... mrs. eyre, i wish you'd give me a drink. i feel shaky."

she left him to give the order. when she returned, they had both steadied down. carefully, and with growing conviction, they gathered the evidence into something like a coherent whole. at the end, io moaned:

"the one thing i can't bear is that cousin billy died, believing that of ban."

she threw herself upon the broad lounge, prone, her face buried in her arms. the veteran of hundreds of fights, brave and blind, righteous and mistaken, crowned with fleeting victories, tainted with irremediable errors, stood silent, perplexed, mournful. he walked slowly over to where the girl was stretched, and laid a clumsy, comforting hand on her shoulder.

"i wish you'd cry for me, too," he said huskily. "i'm too old."