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270 "No," she cut him short. "I mean to tell you that Marrophat and Jimmy are dead."

"I don't believe it!" the old man screamed, aghast. "You're lying to me, you jade! You're lying"

"I am not," she broke in coldly. "I am telling you the plain truth. … They caught up with us here, about noon—came up this road, shooting over the windshield. It was our life or theirs. We turned the hydraulic stream on them and washed the car over the cliff. If you don't believe me, get somebody to show you their faces."

She indicated with a gesture two forms that lay at a little distance back from the roadside, motionless beneath a sheet of canvas, the bodies of Trine's creatures, recovered by the mining gang and brought up for a Christian burial.

But Trine required no more confirmation of Judith's word. The light flickered and died in his evil old eyes; and despair followed realization that he no longer owned even one friend or creature upon whose conscienceless loyalty he might depend.

This, then, was the cruel fruition of his merciless hounding of Alan Law from the woods of northern Maine to the hills of southern California! ...

The last bitter drop that brimmed his cup of misery was added when Alan Law himself appeared, leaving the miners' cabin in company with his betrothed—Rose now soothed and comforted, smiling