The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 10, 1903, Page 4

nw X = e G )\~\ A.ll‘k‘.... 0 THE SUNDAY CALL. ser and another. The sonorous chorus rose above the village, died away, and quiet fell again. Helen sat by the window, no comfort touching her heart. Tears covered her cheeks no longer, but her eyes were wide and staring, and her lips parted, for the hush was broken by the far clamor of the Courthouse bell ringing in the night. It rang and rang, and rang and rang. She could not breathe. She threw open the window. The bell stopped. All was quiet once more. The east was growing gray. Suddenly out of the stillness there came the sound of a horse galloping over a wet road. He was coming like mad. me one for a doctor? the hoof- beats grew louder, coming out from the own, coming this way, coming faster and ter, coming here. There was a plash- g and trampling in front of the house and a sharp “Whoa!” In the dim gray of f dawn she made out a man on a fleccked horse. He drew up at the went ge clear A window to the right of he screeching up. She heard the Ju his throat befcre he spoke What is it? That's you, isn't it, Wiley? What is it?” He took a good deal of time and coughed between the sentences. His ce was more than ordinarily quiet and sounded husky. “What is it, Wiley?"” *Judg: what time did Mr. Harkless leave here Jast night, and which way did ere was a silence. The Judge turned m window. Minnie iding just outside his door have fpast 8, wasn't it, she called in a shaking voic ht he w d man leaned from the answered the man on horse- he left about halfpast 9—just storm. They think he went Willetts is so upset shook; Minnie began to cry aloud. The ho man wheeled about and turned his ani- mal's head toward town “Wiley! “Yes. Wiley, they haven't—you don’t think ¥'ve got him “By God, Judge,” said the man « eback. “I'm afraid they have! CHAPTER X THE COURTHOUSE BELL. The courthouse bell ringing in the night! o hesitating stroke of Schofields’ Henry. o uncertain touch, was on the rope. wild, hurried clamor pealing o the countryside; Ta) to Clang! that struck clear into the wa Clang! Clang spine. The courthouse bell had tolled for the death of Morton, of Garfield, of Hen- dricks; had rung joy peals of peace after the war and after political campaigns; but it had rung as it was ringing now oniy three times—once when Hibbaid's mill burned, once when Webb Landis ed him- lumber yard and would not be imntil he had been shot through and ugh, and once when the Rouen ac- mmodation was wrecked within twenty f the station. was the bell ringing now? Men women, startled into wide wakeful- groped to windows; no red mist g over town or country. What was The bell rang on. Its loud alarm beat increasingly into men’'s hearts and ckened their throbbing to the rapid measure of its own. Vague forms loon.ed in the gloaming. A horse, wildly ridden, splashed through the town. There were shouts; voices called barshly. Lamps be- gan to gleam in the windows. Half-clad pecple emerged from their houses, men slapping their braces on their shoulders as they ran out of doors. Questions were shouted into the dimness. Then the news went over the town. It was cried from yard to yard, from group to group, from gate to gate, and reached the furthermost confines. Run- ners shouted it as they sped by; boys panted it, breathless; women with l0os- ened hair stumbled into darkling cham bers and faltered it out to new-wakered sleepers; pale girls clutching wraps at their throats whispered it across fenc the sick, tossing on their hard beds. heard it. The beil clamored it far and near; it spread over the countryside; it flew over the wires to distant cities. 7he White Caps had got Mr. Harkless! Lige Willetts had lost track of him out near Briscoe’s, it was said, and had come in at midnight seeking him. He had found Parker, the Herald foreman, and Ross Schofield, the typesetter, and bud Tipworthy, the devil, at work in the printing-room, but no sign of Harkles: there or at the cottage. Together th had sought for him and had roused oth- ers, who had inquired at every house where he might have gone for shelter, and they had heard ndthing. They had watched for his coming during the slack- ening of the storm and he had not com and there was nowhere he could have gone. He was missing; only one thing cculd have happened. They bad roused up Warren Smith, the prosecutor, the missing editor’s most inti- mate friend in Carlow, and Horne the Bheriff, and Jared Wiley, tihe deputy. William Todd bad rung the alarm. "The first thing to do was 15 find him. After that there would be trouble—if not before. It looked as if there would be trouble before. The men tramping up to the muddy square in their shirt-sleeves were bulgy about the right hips; and when Homer Tibbs joined Lum Landis at the hotel corner and Landis saw that Homer was carrying a shotgun, Lan- dis went back for hie. A hastily sworn posse galloped out Main street. Women end children ran into neighbors' yards and began to cry. Day was coming; and, as the light grew, men swore and sav- agely kicked at the palings of fences that they passed. In the foreglow of dawn they gathered in the square and listened to Warren Emith, who made a speech from the court- house fence and warned them to go slow. They answered him with angry shouts and hootings, but he made his big bass voice heard, and bade them do nothing rash; no facts were known, he said; it was far from certain that harm had been done, and no one knew that the Six- Cross-Roads people had done it—even if something had havpened to Mr. Hark- less. He declared that he spoke in Hark- less’ name. Nothing could distress him #0 much as for them to defy the law, to take it out of the proper hands. Justice would bhe done. *“Yes, it will!” shouted a man below him, brandishing the butt of a raw-hide whip over his head. “And while you jaw on about it here, he may be tied up like a dog in the woods, shot full of holes by the men you never lifted a finger to hen- der, because you want their votes when vou run for circuit judge. What are we doin’ here? What's the good of listening to you?” There was a vell at this. and those who heard the speaker would probably haye started for the Cross-Roads without fur- ther parley, had not a rumor sprung up, ed Sep Bardlock and intrenc! which passed so rapidly from man to man that within five minutes it was being turbulently discussed in every portion of the crowd. The news came that the two shell gamblers had wrenchéd a bar out of a window under cover of the storm, had broken jail, and were at large. Their threats of the day before were remem- bered now, with convincing vividness. They had sworn repeatedly to Bardlock and to the Sheriff, and in the hearing of others, that they would “do” for the man who took their money from them and had them arrested. The prosecuting at- torney, quickly perceiving the value of this complication in holding back the mob that was already forming, called Horner from the crowd and made him get up on the fence and confess that his pris- oners had escaped—at what time he did not know, probably toward the beginning of the storm, when it was noisiest. “You see,” cried the attorney, ‘‘there is nothing as vet of which we can accuse the Cross-Roads. If our friend has been hurt, it is much more likely that these crooks did it. They escaped in time to do it, and we all know they were laying for him. You want to be mighty careful, fellow citizens. Horner is alr in tele- graphic communication with every town around here, and we'll have those men before night. All you've got to do is to control vourse!ves a little and go home quietly.” He could see that his words (except those in reference to returning home—no one was going home) made an impression. There rose a babble of shouting and argument and swearing they grew continually louder, ard the faces the lawyer looked down on were creased with perplexity and show cwed with anger that settled darker anl darker. Mr. Ephraim Watts, in spite of all con- fusion, clad as carefully as upon the pre- ceding day, deliberately climbed the tence and stood by the lawyer and made a sin- gle gesture with his hand. He was lis- tened to at once, as his respect for the law was less notorious than his irrever- ence for it, and he had been known in Carlow as a customarily reckless man. They wanted illegal and desperate adyice and quieted down to hear it. He spoke in srofessionally calm voice ntlemen, it seems to me that Mr. th and Mr. Ribshaw (nodding to the man with the rawhide whip) are hoth right. What good are we doing here? What we want to know is what happened to Mr. Harkless. It looks just now like the shellmen might have done it. Let's find out what they done. Scatter and hunt for him. 'Soon as anything i= known for certain Hibbard's mill whistle will biow three times. Keep on looking till it does. Then,” he finished, with a barely pereeptibly scornful smile at the attorney, “then we can decide on what had ought to be done. Six-Cross Roads lay dark and steaming in the sun that morning. The forge was silent, the saloon locked up, the roadway deserted, even by the pigs. The broken old buggy stood rotting on the mud with- out a single lean, little old man or wom- an—such were the children of the Cross- Roads—to play about it. The fields were empty and the rag-stuffed windows blank under the baleful glance of the horsemen who galloped by at intervals, muttering curses, not always confining t! emselves to muttering them. Once. when the deputy Sheriff rode through alone, a tattered black hound, more wolf than dog, half emerged, growling, from beneath one of the tumble down barns and was jerked back into the darkness by his tail with a snarl fiercer than his own, while a gun barrel shone for a second as it swung for a stroke on the brute's head. The hound did not yelp or whine when the blow fell. He shut his eyes twice and slunk back to his place. The shanties might have received a vol- ley or two from some of the mounted bands, exasperated by futile searching, bad not the escape of Horner's prisoners made the guilt of the Cross-Roads appear deubtful in the minds of many. As the morning waned the advocates of the the- ory that the gamblers had made away with Harkless grew in number. There came a telegram from the Rouen Chief of Police that he had a clew to their where- abouts; he thought they had succeeded in reaching Rouen and it began to be generally belleved that they had escaped Ly the 1 o'clock freight, which had stop- ped to take on some empty cars at a side trtack a mile northwest of the town, across the fields from the Briscoe house. Teward noon a party went out to examine the railroad embankment. Men began to come back into the vil- lage for breakfast by twos and threes, though many kept on searching the woaods, not feeling the need of food or car- iug if they did. Every grove and clump of underbrush, every thicket, was ran- sacked; the waters of the creek, shallow for the most part, but swollen over night, were dragged at every pool. Nothing was found; there was not a sign The bar of the hotel was thronged all morning as the returning citizens rapidly made their way thither, and those who had breakfasted and were going out again paused for internal, as well as ex- ternal, reinforcement. The landlord, him- self returned from a long hunt, set up his whisky with a lavish hand. ““He was the best man we had. boys.” said Landis as he poured the little glases full. “We'd ort of sent him to the legislative halls of Washington long ago. He'd of done us honor there; but we never thought of doin’ anything fer him: jest set 'round and left him build up the town and give him empty thankyes Drink hearty, gentlemen,” he firished glomily, “I don't grudge no liquor to- day—except to Lige Willett “He was a good man,” said young Wil- liam Todd, whose nose was red, not from the whisky. “I've about give up.” Schofields’ Henry drew h.s sleeve across his eyes. “He was the only man in this whole city that didn’t jab and nag at me when ,I done my best,” he exclaimed, with &n increasing break in his utter- ance. “Many a good word I've had from him when nobody in town done nothin’ but laugh an’ rile an’ badger me about my—my bell.” And Schofields' Henry began to ¢ry openly. “He was a great hand with the chul- dren,” said one man. “Always have something to say to ‘em to make 'em laugh when he went by. 'Talk more to them 'n he would to grown folks. Yes, sir. ““They knowed him all right,” added an- other. *“I reckon all of us did, little and big.” “It’s goin’ to seem mighty empty around here,” said Ross Schofield. “What's goin’ to become o' the Herald and the party in this district? Where's the man to run either of "em now. Like as not,”” he con- cluded desperately, ‘“the election’ll go against us in the fall.” Dibb Zane choked over his four fingers. “We might's well bust up this dab-dusted ole town ef he’s gone.” “I don’t know what's come over that Cynthy Tipworthy,” said the landiord. “She’s waited table on him last two years, and her brother Bud works at the Herald office. She didn’t say a word— only looked and looked and looked—like a crazy woman; then her and Bud went off together to hunt in the woods. They just tuck hold of each other's hands like—"" “That ain’t nothing,” Homer Tibbs broke in. “You'd ort to've saw old Miz Hathaway, that widder woman next door to us, when she heard it. He had helped her to git her pension, and she tuck on worse 'n’ anything 1 ever hear—lot worse 'n’ when Hathaway died.” “1 reckon there ain't many crazier than them two Bowlders, father and son,” sald the postmaster, wiping the drops from his beard as he set his glass on the bar. “They rid into town like a couple of wi:d Indians, the old man beatin’ that gray mare o' theirn till she was one big welt, and he ain’t natcherly no cruel man. I reckon Lige Willetts better keep out of Hartley's way."” “I keep out of no man's way,” cried a voice behifid him. Turning, they saw Lige standing on the threshold of the door that led to the street. In his hand he held the bridle of the horse he had ridden across the sidewalk, and that now stood pant- ing, with lowered head, half through the doorway, beside his master. Lige was hatless, splashed with mud from head to foot; his jaw was set, his teeth ground to- gether; his eyes burned under red lids, and his hair lay toss:d and damp on his brow. “l keep out of no man's way,” he repeated, hoarsely. “I heard you, Mr. Tibbs, but I've got too much to do, white you !oaf and gas and drink over Lum Landis’ bar—I've got other business than keeping out of Hartley Bowider's I'm looking for John Harkless. He the 1 man we had in this ornery and he was too good for us, and sy we've maybe let him get killed, and maybe I'm to blame. But I'm going to find him, and if he's hurt—damn me! I'm going to have a hand on the rope that lifts the men that did it, if I have to go to Rouen to put it there! After that I'l answer for my fault, not before! He threw himself on his horse and was gone. Soon the room was emptied, as the patrons of the bar returned to the search, and only Mr. Wilkersen and the landlord remained, the bar being the professional office, so to speak, of both. At 11 o’clock Judge Briscoe dropped wearily from his horse at his own gate, and said to a wan girl who came run- ning down the walk to met him: “There is nothing, vet. I sent the telegram to your mother—to Mrs. Sherwood.” Helen turned away without answering. Her face was very white and looked pinched about the mouth. She went back to where old Fisbee sat on the porch, h white head held between his two hands; he was rocking himseif to and fro. She touched him gently, but he did not look up. She spoke to him. “There isn't anything—yet. He sent the telegram to mamma. 1 shall stay with you now, no matter what you say She sat beside him and put her head down on his shoulder, and though for a mo- ment he appeared not to notice it, when Minnie came out on the porch, hearing her father at the door, the old scholar had put him arm about the girl and was stroking her fair hair softly. Briscoe glanced at them, and raised a warning finger to his daughter, and they went tiptoeing into the house, where the Judge dropped heavily upon a sofa with an asthmatic sigh: he s worn and tired. Minnie stood before him with a look of pale inquiry, and he shook his head. “No use to tell them; but I can't see any hope,” he answered her, biting ne: vously at the end of a cigar. “I expest vou better bring me some coffee in here: T couldn’t take another step to save me. I'm too old to tear around the country horseback before breakfast, like I have to-day.” “Did you send her telegram?’ Miunie asked as he drank the coffee she brought him. She had interpreted ‘‘coffee” liber- ally, and with the assistance of Mildy Upton (whose subdued nose was frankly red and who shed tears on the raspber- ries) had prepared an appetizing table at his elbow. “Yes,” responded the Judge, ‘“and I'm glad she sent it. 1 talked the other way vesterday, what little I sald—it fsn't any of our business—but 1 don’t think any too much of those people, somehow. She thinks she belongs with Fisbee, and 1 guess she’'s right. That young feliow must have got along with her pretty well, and I'm afraid when she gives up she'll be pretty bad over it; but I guess we ail will. It's terribly sudden, somehow, though it's only what everybody half-ex- pected would come; only we thought it would come from over yonder.” He nod- ded toward the west. “But she's go* to stay here with us. Boarding at Sol Tibbs' with that old man won’t'do; and she's no girl to live in two rooms. You fix it up with her—you make her stay.” “‘She must.”” answered his daughter as she knelt beside him and patted his cou~ and handed him several things to eat at the same time. “Mr. Fisbee will help me persuade her, now that® she’s bound to stay in spite of him and the Sherwoods, too. I think she is perfectly grand to do it I've always thought she was grard— ever since she took me under her wing at school when I was terribly ‘country’ and frightened; but she was so sweet and k she made me forget. She was the pe: of the school, too, always doing things for the other girls, for everybody; lovk- ing out for people simply heads and heads tigger than herself, and so recklessly sea- erous and so funny about it; and always thoughtful and—and—pleasant— Minnie was speaking sadly, mechamal- Iy: but suddenly she broke off with a Guick sob, sprang up and went to the window: then, turning, cried out: “1 don’t believe it! He knew how to take care of himself too well. He'd have got away from them!™ Her father shook hig head. “Then why hasn’'t he turned up? He'd have gone home after the storm if something vad wasn't the matter.” “But nothing—nothing that bad could kave happened. They haven't found-any —anything.” But why hasn’t he come back, child”" “Well's he's lying hurt somewhere, that's all.” “Then why haven't they found him?" “l don't care!” she cried, and choked with the words and tossed her dishevelod hair from her temples; “it isn't true. Helen won’t believe it—why should 17 It's only a few hours since he was right here in our yard, talking to us all. | won't believe it till they've searched every stick and stone of Six-Cross-Roads ainl found him.” “It wasn't the Cross-Roads.” said the old gentleman, pushing the table away and relaxing his Hmbs on the sofa. “Thoey probably didn’t have anything to do with it. We thought they had at first, but everybody's about come to believe it was those two devils that he had arrestel vesterday.” Not the Cross-Roads!" echoed Minnie. and she began to tremble violentiy. “Haven’t they been out there yer?" “What use? They are out of it, and they can thank God they are!” ;;rheym;n:t no[t!" she cried excitediy. “They . It was the ite-C We saw them, Helen and [." b The Judge got upon his feet with an oath. He had not sworn for years untl that morning. “What's this?’ he said sharply. “I ought to have told you before, but we were so frightened, and—and you went offt in such a rush after Mr. Wiley was here. 1 never dreamed everybody wouldn't know it was the Cross-Roads; that they would think of any one eise. And I looked for the scarecrow as soon as it was light and it was 'way off from where we saw them, and wasn't blown down at all, and Helen saw them in the field be- sides—saw all of them—"" He interrupted her. “What do vou mean? Try to tell me about it quiely, child.” He laid his hand on her shouider. She told him breathlessly (while grew more and more visibly perturbed and uneasy, biting his cigar to pleces and groaning at intervals) what she and Hel had seen in the storm. When she finished he took a few auick turns about the room with his hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, and then, charging her to repeat the story to no one, left the house, and forgetting his fatigue rapidly crossed the flelds to the point where the bizarre figures of the night had shown themselves to the two girls at the window. He knew that if he spoke, his evidence would damn the Cross-Roads, and that it meant that more than the White-Caps would be hurt, for the Cross-Roads would fight. If ke had belleved tBat the dissemination of his knowledge could have helped Hark'ess, he would have called to the men near him at once; but he had no hope that the young man was alive. They would not have dragged him out to their shanties wounded, or as a prisoner; such a proceeding would have courted detection, and, also, they were not that kind; they had been *“looking for him” a long time, and their one idea was to kill him. And Harkless, for all his, gentleness, was the sort of man, Briscoe believed, who weuld have to be killed before he ccnid be touched. Of one thing the old gentleman was sure; the editor had not been tied up and whipped while yet aiive, In snitc <f his easy manners and genial- ity. there was a digni’y in him that would have made him kill and be killed before the dirty fingers of a Cross-Roads “White-Cap” could have been laid upon him in chastiseffent. A great many good Americans of Carlow who knew him well always Mistered him. as they would have Mistered only an untitled Morton or Hendricks who might have lived among them. He was the only man the old darky, Uncle Xenophon, had ever ad- dressed as ““Mars since he came to Plattville, thirty years ago. Briscce considered it probable that a few people were wearing bandages in the closed shanties over to the west to-day. A thought of the number they had bought against one man; a picture of the unequal struggle. of the young fellow he had liked so well, unarmed and fighting hopelessly in a trap, and a sense of the cruelty of it, made the hot anger surge up 1n his breast, and he started on again. Then he stopped once more. Though long rctired from faithful service on the bench, he had been all his life a serious ex- ponent of law, and what he went to tell meant lawlessness that no one could hope to check. He knew the temper of the people; their long suffering was at an end, and they would go over at last and wipe, out the Cross-Roads. It depended on him. If the mob could be held off over to-day, if men's minds could cool over night, the law could strike and the inno- and the hot-headed be spared from ffering. He would wait; he would lay is information before the Sheriff, ana Horner would go quietly with a strong pesse, for he would need a strong one. He began to retrace his steps. The men on the embankment were walking slowly, bending far over, their eyes fixed on the ground. Suddeniy one of them stood erect and tossed his arms in the air and shouted loudly. Other men ran to him, and another far down the track repeated the shout and the gesture to another far in his rear; this man took it up and shouted and waved to a fourth man, and so they passed the signal back to town. There came, almost immediate- ly, three long, loud whistles from a mill near the station, and the embankment grew black with people pouring out from town, while the searchers came running from the fields and wcods and underbrush on both sides of the railway. Briscoe paused for the last time; then he began to walk slowly toward the em- bankment. The track lay level and straight, not dimming in the middle distances, the rails converging to points, both northwest and southedst, in the clean-washed air, like examples of perspective in a child’'s drawing boek. About seventy miles to the west and north lay Rouen, and in the same direction, nearly six miles from where the signal was given, the track was crossed by a road leading dircetly south to Six-Cross-Roads. The embankment had been newly bal- lasted with sand. What had been discov- ered was a broad brown stain on the south slope near the top. There were smaller stains above and below; none Le- nd it to left or right; and there were deep boot prints in the sand. Men wcre examining the place excitedly, talkivg and gesticulating. It was Lige Willeits who had found it. His hor:e was tethered to a fence near by at the end of a lune through a cornfield. Jared Wiley, the deputy, was talking to a group near ‘the stain, explaining. 5 “You see, them two must have kno about the 1 o'clock freight, and that it was to stop here to take on the ~mpty lumber ca; 1 don't know how they knowed it, but they did. Tt was this way: when they dropped from the window they beat through the storm straight for this sidetrack. At the same time Mr. Harkless leaves Briscoes’ goin' w. 1t beging to rain. He culs ac oss to the iail road to have a sure footing, and strikin for the deepo for shelter—near place as any except Briscoes’, where he's said sood-night already and prob'ly don’t wish to go back, 'fear of givin' trouble or keepin' ‘em up-—-anybody can understand that. He comes along and gets to where we are precigely at the time they do, them comin’ from town, him strikin® for it. They run right into each other. That's what happened. Théy re-cog-nized him and raised up on him and let him nave it. What they done it with T don’t &ncw we took everything in that line off of ‘er prob’ly used railroad iron; and what t done with him afterward we don't kno but we will by night. They'll sweat it out of 'em up at Rouen when they get ‘em. “I reckon maybe some of us might heip,” remarked Mr. Watts, reflectively. Jim Bardlock swore a violent outh. “That's the talk!” he shouted. X ¢ ain’t the first man of this crowd to =et my foot in Roowun, an’ first to beat in the jail door an’ take 'em out an' nang 'em by the neck till they're dead, dead, dead, I'm not Town Marshal of Plattville, County of Carlow, State of Indiana, and the Lord have mercy on our souls!" Tom Martin looked at the brown stain and quickly turned away; then he went back slowly to the village. ‘When the attorney reached the spot where the crowd was thickest, way was made for him. The old colored man, Xenophon. approached at the same time, leaning on a hickory stick and bent very far over, one hand resting on his hip as if to ease a rusty joint. The negro’s age was an incentive to fable; appearance have known the prophets, and he wore that hoary look of unearthly wisdom many decades of super- members of his race. His face, so tortur- ed with wrinkles that it might haye been made of innumerable black threads woven together, was a living mask of the my Harkless had once said that Uncie Xenophon had visited heaven before Swedenborg and hell before Dante. 0-day, as he slowly limped over the ties, eyes were bright and dry under the and, though his heavy nc trils were unusually distended in the ef- tery of his blood. them were He stopped and looked at the faces be- fore him. When he spoke his voice was gentle, and though the tremulqQusness of age harped on the vocal string “Kin some kine ge please t'be so good t’ show de ole main whuh de w'ite caips is done shoot Marse Hawkliss?" was where it happened, Uncle answered Wiley, “Here is the stain.” muyn,” he asked, resumed his his bilood,” en he painfully former position. id. in the same gentle, quavering tone. whut lay on de groun’ whuh yo staind, gelmun.” as a pause, and no one spoke. “Dass whuh day laid 'im an’ dass whuh the old negro continued. . Dey ain’ shat ‘im heah—yondeah dey druggen 'im, but dis He bent over again, and placed his hand on the stain, one would have said, as a man might place his hand over the heart to gee if it still beat. tionless, with the air of hearkening. “Marse, honey, is you gone?” his volce as if calling, “Is you gone, suh? then knelt, groaningly, He was mo- He looked up at the circle about him, and, still kneeling, not taking his hand from the sand, seeming to wait for a s to listen for a voice, he said: “Whafo’ you Lawd summon he de mos’ Marse Hawkliss? tes'? You know dat man he ketch me in de cole night, N You know whut he up big fiah een ‘he’p yo'se’f an’ you hongry, you, Xenophon?' Tek an' feed me. tek keer o' 4 full in de mawin’; pull de weeds out'n of de front walk—das He tek me ain’ he fraid keep ole thief he ‘Dass all my fault, Xenopho ought know be cole dese baid nights. Ahmn de thievenest phon, keepin® all dis wood stock’ up when you got none,’ he say, jesso. Tek me in; Pay me sala'y whut de Caips He ralsed his head and the mystery in his gloumy eves intensified as they opened wide and stared at the sky, unseeing “Ise bawn wid a cawl!” he exclaimed e was braced to Jse bawn wid a Dass de mein gone shot lais’ His twisted fr; an cxtréme tension. De blood anssu “It wasn’t the Cross-Roads, Uncle Xen- sald Warren Smith, hand on the old man’s shoulder. Xenophon rose to his feet. He stretcted a long, bony arm straight to the west. where the Cross-Roads lay; stood rigid and silent, like a seer; then spoke: “De men whut shot Marse Hawk| yondeh, hidin’ f'um de light o' day. Ax him"—he swerved his whole rigid bed till .the arm pointed northwest—“he lics yondeh. You won't find him heah. Decy fought "im een de fiel's an’ dey drugs: 'im heah. Dis whuh dey lay 'im down. Ise bawn wid a cawl!™ There \were exciamations from the lis- teners, for Xenophon spoke as one having avthority. Suddenly he turned gnd pcini- ed his outstretched hand full at Judge Briscoe. “An’ s de main,” he cried, “‘dass de main tell you Ah speak de trufe Before he was answered, Eph Watls looked at Briscoe keenly and then turied to Lige Willetts and whispered: “Get on ¥ horse, ride in, and ring the court- use bell like the devil. Do as I say!™ Tears stood in the Judge's eyes. “It is so,”" he said, solemnly. fe speaks the truth. I didn’t mean to tell it to-day, but somehow—" e paused. “The hounds! ke erfed. “They deserve it! My dau ter saw them crossing the fields in night—saw them climb the fence, ho gowns, and all, a big crowd of them. and the lady who is visiting us saw them w them plainly. The lady saw them several times, clear as day, by the flashes ot lightning—the scoundrels were coming thig way. They must have been dragging him with them then. He couldn't aave had a show for his life among them D¢ what you like—muybe they've at the Cross-Roads. If there's a chance of it—dead or alive—bring him back!™ A volce rang out above the clamor that owed the Judge's speech. ‘Bring him back!" God could, may- be, but He won't. Who's traveling roy way? I go west!” Hartley Bowlder had riden his sorrel up the embankment, and the horse stood between the ralls. There was an angry rear from the ciowd; the prosecutor pleaded and threat- ened unhceded; and as for the sheriff, he declared his intention of taking with him all who wished to go as uis posse. Eph Watts succeeded in making himse!f heard above the tumuit “The Square!" he shouted. “Start from the Square. We want everyboc nd we'll need them. We want every n Carlow to be implicated in this possc.” “They will be shouted a farmer. “Don’t you worry about that “We want to get Into some sort of shape,” cried Eph. “Shape, hell!” sail Hartley Bowider. There was a hiss and clang and rattle bebind him and a steam whistle shrieked. The ecrowd divided and Hartley's sorrel jumped just in time as the westbound ac- commodation rushed through on its way to Roven. From the rean platform leaned the Sheriff, Horner, waving his hands frantically as he flew by, but no one un- derstood—or cared—what he said, or, in the general excitement, even wondered why he was leaving the scene of his duty at such a time. When the train nad dwindled to a dot and disappeared and the noise of its rush grew faint the court- house bell was heard ringing and the meh was piling pell-mell into the villa to form on the square. The Judge slone on the embankmen “That settles it,” ily, watching the figures. off hiz hat and pushed back the thick, white hair from his forehead. othing to do but wait. Might as well go home for ttat. Blast it!" he exclaimed Impa- tiently. “I don't want to go there. It's toe hard on tke little girl. If she hadn't come till next week she’d never have known John Hark'ess. fc (Continued next Sunday.) 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