“Yes, tell us, David,” said the shepherd, and his voice was steady.

The physician spoke, “Matter of hours, I would say.  Twenty-four, perhaps; not more; not more.”

“There is no possible chance, David?” asked the shepherd.

Again the little doctor took refuge behind a broadside of scientific terms before replying, “No; no possible chance.”

A groan slipped from the gray bearded lips of the father.  The artist turned to the picture and smiled.  Pete looked wonderingly from face to face.

“Poor father,” said the artist.  “One thing more, Doctor; can you keep up my strength for awhile?”

“Reasonably well, reasonably well, Howard.”

“I am so glad of that because there is much to do before I go.  There is so much that must be done first, and I want you both to help me.”

CHAPTER XL.

The shepherd’s mission.

During the latter part of that night and most of the day, it rained; a fine, slow, quiet rain, with no wind to shake the wet from burdened leaf or blade.  But when the old shepherd left the cave by a narrow opening on the side of the mountain, near Sammy’s Lookout, the sky was clear.  The mists rolled heavily over the valley, but the last of the sunlight was warm on the knobs and ridges.

The old man paused behind the rock and bushes that concealed the mouth of the underground passage.  Not a hundred feet below was the Old Trail; he followed the little path with his eye until it vanished around the shoulder of Dewey.  Along that way he had come into the hills.  Then lifting his eyes to the far away lines of darker blue, his mind looked over the ridge to the world that is on the other side, the world from which he had fled.  It all seemed very small and mean, now; it was so far—­so far away.

He started as the sharp ring of a horse’s iron shoe on the flint rocks came from beyond the Lookout, and, safely hidden, be saw a neighbor round the hill and pass on his way to the store on Roark.  He watched, as horse and rider followed the Old Trail around the rim of the Hollow; watched, until they passed from sight in the belt of timber.  Then his eyes were fixed on a fine thread of smoke that curled above the trees on the Matthews place; and, leaving the shelter of rock and bush, he walked along the Old Trail toward the big log house on the distant ridge.

Below him, on his left, Mutton Hollow lay submerged in the drifting mists, with only a faint line of light breaking now and then where Lost Creek made its way; and on the other side Compton Ridge lifted like a wooded shore from the sea.  A black spot in the red west shaped itself into a crow, making his way on easy wing toward a dead tree on the top of Boulder Bald.  The old shepherd walked wearily; the now familiar objects wore a strange look.  It was as though he saw them for the first time, yet had seen them somewhere before, perhaps in another world.  As he went his face was the face of one crushed by shame and grief, made desperate by his suffering.