noon
-- how his muscles pained at the slightest motion ! He ground his teeth when he first began to walk , and hobbled like a rheumatic cripple ; but within a half-hour tenacity had won , and the relentless jog-trot of the interrupted line was measuring off the miles anew . The chase was nearing an end . Long ere noon , in the distance toward which he was heading , Blair detected a brown dot against the white . Steadily , as he advanced , it resolved itself into the thing he had expected , and stood revealed before him , the centre of a horribly legible page , the last page in the biography of a noble horse . Let us pass it by : Ben did , looking the other way . But a new and terrible vitality possessed him .