“A few evenings later, but less than a month after the accident, I went to bed, leaving him cleaning a revolver which he thought a deal of, and certainly he could shoot very straight with it. I was sitting half-undressed, when I heard a loud report, and you may imagine the feelings with which I ran to the room where I had left him. He was sitting at the table, with his left hand raised, as though to reach his heart, and his right straight down by his side, the revolver on the floor beneath it. He was dead, shot through the heart; but his head was slightly thrown back, his eyes wide open, and in them that look of listening expectancy I had seen so often of late. At the corners of his mouth there seemed to be the shadow of the faintest smile.
“At the inquest I explained that I left him cleaning the pistol, and that, as it had a hair-trigger, no doubt it had gone off by misadventure. When each of the jurors had, in turn, raised the hammer, and found it was hardly necessary to touch the trigger in order to fire the weapon, they unanimously returned a verdict of ‘accidental death.’”
“It is curious,” concluded my companion, “but I sometimes think I hear the jingle of that coin, especially if I am alone on this hill, or sitting by myself at night in the house where that sad accident happened.” He put a slight stress on the word “accident,” that was not lost on me.
As we passed the stone, on our way down the hill, I seemed to see that horse blunder backwards over the edge of the path, to hear the slow, crunching roll, and then the crash and ghastly thud, far down below; and, as an involuntary shudder crept slowly down my back, I thought I heard the faint jingle of that ill-omened piece of gold.
VIII
A STRANGE SUNSET
YOU will think I am eternally babbling of sunsets, but no one, with a spark of feeling, could be here and not be moved to the depths of his nature by the matchless, the ever-changing beauty of the wonderful pictures that are so constantly before his eyes. People who are utterly commonplace, whose instincts seem, in some respects, to approach those of the beasts, when they come here are amazed into new sensations, and, in unaccustomed words, voice the expression of their admiration. If I weary you, pardon me, and remember that you are the only victim of my exaltation.
One looks for a sunset in the west, does one not? and that is the direction in which to find it here as elsewhere; but to-night the marvellous effects of the setting sun were, for a time, confined almost entirely to the east, or, to be strictly accurate, rather to the south of east. Facing that direction one looks across a remarkable ridge, entirely covered by giant forest trees. The ridge dips in a sort of crescent from about 4500 feet in height at one extremity to 3000 feet at the other, and extends for a distance of perhaps two miles between the horns. Beyond and below the ridge lies a great, fertile valley, watered by a stately river, along the opposite bank of which runs a range of hills, varying in height from 2000 to 3000 feet. Behind these hills there is another valley, another range, and then a succession of ever-loftier mountains, forming the main chain.
The sun had disappeared behind a thick bank of grey clouds, and the only evidence of his presence was in the lambent edges of these clouds, which here and there glittered like molten metal. The western sky was, except for this bank, extraordinarily clear and cloudless, of a pale translucent blue, flecked here and there by tiny cloud-boats, airy and delicate, moving very slowly across the empyrean. I noticed this because what I saw in the east was so remarkable that I noted every detail.