The Night Horseman | Page 9

The invalid turned his white head slowly towards them, and his shaggy
brows lifted and fell slightly--a passing shadow of annoyance. It was a
very stern face, and framed in the long, white hair it seemed surrounded
by an atmosphere of Arctic chill. He was thin, terribly thin--not the
leanness of Byrne, but a grim emaciation which exaggerated the size of
a tall forehead and made his eyes supernally bright. It was in the first
glance of those eyes that Byrne recognized the restlessness of which
Kate had spoken; and he felt almost as if it were an inner fire which had
burned and still was wasting the body of Joseph Cumberland. To the
attentions of the doctor the old man submitted with patient self-control,
and Byrne found a pulse feeble, rapid, but steady. There was no
temperature. In fact, the heat of the body was a trifle sub-normal,
considering that the heart was beating so rapidly.
Doctor Byrne started. Most of his work had been in laboratories, and
the horror of death was not yet familiar, but old Joseph Cumberland
was dying. It was not a matter of moment. Death might be a week or a
month away, but die soon he inevitably must; for the doctor saw that
the fire was still raging in the hollow breast of the cattleman, but there
was no longer fuel to feed it.
He stared again, and more closely. Fire without fuel to feed it!
Doctor Byrne gave what seemed to be an infinitely muffled cry of

exultation, so faint that it was hardly a whisper; then he leaned closer
and pored over Joe Cumberland with a lighted eye. One might have
thought that the doctor was gloating over the sick man.
Suddenly he straightened and began to pace up and down the room,
muttering to himself. Kate Cumberland listened intently and she
thought that what the man muttered so rapidly, over and over to himself,
was: "Eureka! Eureka! I have found it!"
Found what? The triumph of mind over matter!
On that couch was a dead body. The flutter of that heart was not the
strong beating of the normal organ; the hands were cold; even the body
was chilled; yet the man lived.
Or, rather, his brain lived, and compelled the shattered and outworn
body to comply with its will. Doctor Byrne turned and stared again at
the face of Cumberland. He felt as if he understood, now, the look
which was concentrated so brightly on the vacant air. It was illumined
by a steady and desperate defiance, for the old man was denying his
body to the grave.
The scene changed for Randall Byrne. The girl disappeared. The walls
of the room were broken away. The eyes of the world looked in upon
him and the wise men of the world kept pace with him up and down the
room, shaking their heads and saying: "It is not possible!"
But the fact lay there to contradict them.
Prometheus stole fire from heaven and paid it back to an eternal death.
The old cattleman was refusing his payment. It was no state of coma in
which he lay; it was no prolonged trance. He was vitally, vividly alive;
he was concentrating with a bitter and exhausting vigour day and night,
and fighting a battle the more terrible because it was fought in silence,
a battle in which he could receive no aid, no reinforcement, a battle in
which he could not win, but in which he might delay defeat.
Ay, the wise men would smile and shake their heads when he presented

this case to their consideration, but he would make his account so
accurate and particular and so well witnessed that they would have to
admit the truth of all he said. And science, which proclaimed that
matter was indestructible and that the mind was matter and that the
brain needed nourishment like any other muscle--science would have to
hang the head and wonder!
The eyes of the girl brought him to halt in his pacing, and he stopped,
confronting her. His excitement had transformed him. His nostrils were
quivering, his eyes were pointed with light, his head was high, and he
breathed fast. He was flushed as the Roman Conqueror. And his
excitement tinged the girl, also, with colour.
She offered to take him to his room as soon as he wished to go. He was
quite willing. He wanted to be alone, to think. But when he followed
her she stopped him in the hall. Buck Daniels lumbered slowly after
them in a clumsy attempt at sauntering.
"Well?" asked Kate Cumberland.
She had thrown a blue mantle over her shoulders when she entered the
house, and the touch of boyish self-confidence which had been hers on
the ride was