The murderer moved to the side of the murdered, knelt stiffly, and laid his hand upon the heart.  It, too, was still.  Rand stood up.  The pistol was yet in his clasp; he swung his arm above his head and hurled the weapon into the stream.  A pace or two away was a smooth and rounded rock like a giant pebble.  He sat down upon it, locked his hands, and looked about him.  The sky was blue, the leaves were green, the sun shone hot, the water was at its ancient song—­whence, then, came the noxious change, and what was the matter with the universe?  Cary lay among the stones, with head thrown back and one arm stretched out as though the hand were pointing.  The face was quiet, set in the icy beauty of death, and young.  There came a roll of thunder.  Rand looked at his clasped hands, opened them, and moved the right one slightly to and fro.  There was blood upon his coatsleeve—­a great smear.  He drew a sighing breath.  He felt as a voyager might who awakened on a planet not his own and at midnight saw the faint star where once he lived.  As yet the wonder numbed.  The complete cessation of anger, too, was confusing.  There was only the plane of existence, grey and featureless.  This lasted some moments, then the lights began to play.

He rose from the stone and, going to the water’s edge, knelt and tried to wash the blood from his sleeve, but without success.  He stood up with a frown.  The clouds were high above the treetops, though the sun yet shone.  At a little distance Selim was quietly grazing, the birds had returned to their song, the squirrels to their play along the leafy boughs.  Rand looked at his watch.  “Twelve o’clock—­twelve o’clock.”  Suddenly a thought struck him.  “The pistol, with my name engraved on it—­”

He had flung the weapon far into the water.  The stream was hardly more than a wide brook, but its bed was broken, and above and below the little ford the water fell over ledges into small, deep pools.  Where had the pistol fallen?  If into one of these, he could not find it again.  He had no time to sound them one by one.  He moved along the bank, his keen eyes searching the water.  The pistol was nowhere visible; it must have gone into midstream, into a pool below a cascade.  If so, it might lie there, undiscovered, a thousand years.  He stood irresolute.  Could he have done so, he would have dragged the stream, but there was now no time to squander.  Once more he made certain that it lay nowhere in clear water or near the shore, then abruptly left the search.

He stood in thought for another moment, then with deliberation moved to his victim’s side and looked down upon him with a face almost as blank and still as the dead man’s own.  Presently he spoke:  “Good-bye, Cary.”  The sound of his own voice, strained and strange, hardly raised above a whisper and yet, in the silence of this new world, more loud than thunder, broke the spell.  He uttered a strangled cry, dashed up the strand to the grazing horse, flung himself into the saddle, and applied the spur.