There was no doubting the meaning of Joe Cumberland.  It grew upon them with amazing swiftness, as if the black stallion were racing upon the house at a swift gallop, and the whistling rose and rang and soared in a wild outburst.  Give the eagle the throat of the lark, and after he has struck down his prey in the centre of the sky and sent the ragged feathers and the slain body falling down to earth, what would be the song of the eagle rising again and dwindling out of sight in the heart of the sky?  What terrible pean would he send whistling down to the dull earth far below?  And such was the music that came before the coming of Dan Barry.  It did not cease, as usual, at a distance, but it came closer and closer, and it swelled around them.  Buck Daniels had risen from his chair and stolen to a corner of the room where not a solitary shaft of light could possibly reach him; and Kate Cumberland slipped farther into the depths of the big chair.

So that, in their utter silence, in spite of the whistling that blew in upon them, they could hear the dull ticking of the tall clock, and by a wretched freak of fate the ticking fell exactly in with the soaring rhythm of the whistle and each had a part in the deadliness of the other.

Very near upon them the music ceased abruptly.  A footfall swept down the hall, a weight struck the door and cast it wide, and Black Bart glided into the room.  He cast not a glance on either side.  He turned his head neither to right nor to left.  But he held straight on until he came to Kate Cumberland and there he stood before her.

She leaned forward.

“Bart!” she said softly and stretched out her hands to him.

A deep snarl stopped the gesture, and at the flash of the long fangs she sank into the chair.  Old Joe Cumberland, with fearful labour, dragged himself to a sitting position upon the couch, and sitting up in this fashion the light fell fully upon his white face and his white hair and his white beard, so that he made a ghostly picture.

Then an outer door slammed and a light step, at an almost running pace speeded down the hall, the door was swung wide again, and Dan was before them.  He seemed to bring with him the keen, fresh air of the light, and at the opening of the door the flame in the lamp jumped in its chimney, shook, and fell slowly back to its original dimness; but by that glow of light they saw that the sombrero upon Dan Barry’s head was a shapeless mass—­his bandana had been torn away, leaving his throat bare—­his slicker was a mass of rents and at the neck had been crumpled and torn in a thousand places as though strong teeth had worried it to a rag.  Spots of mud were everywhere on his boots, even on his sombrero with its sagging brim, and on one side of his face there was a darker stain.  He had ceased his whistling, indeed, but now he stood at the door and hummed as he gazed about the room.  Straight to Kate Cumberland he walked, took her hands, and raised her from the chair.