there had been a verdict that deceased came
to his death from a wound made by a revolver in the hands of Frederick
Sterling.

Some of the jury still hung about the place with cumbrous attempts at
helpfulness, and Minerva moved tearfully to and fro in the kitchen,
wearing her husband's hat with a reckless assumption of masculine rights
and feminine privileges, while she set out a "bite of something" for the
coroner, who must ride back to Los Angeles in hot haste.

Ulysses had denied himself the unwonted pleasure of listening longer to
the men's whispered talk, to follow the stranger into the kitchen and
watch him eat; his curiosity concerning the habits of that dignitary
being considerably heightened by the official's haste, which pointed
strongly to a rapid succession of murders requiring his personal
attention, and marking him as a man of dark and bloody knowledge.

The hounds shared the boy's curiosity, and stood beside the table waving
their scroll-like tails, and watching with expectant eagerness the
unerring precision with which the stranger conveyed a knife-load of
"frijoles" from his plate to his mouth. When he had finished his repast,
gulping the last half-glass of buttermilk, and wiping the white beads
from his overhanging mustache with quick horizontal sweeps of his gayly
bordered handkerchief, he leaned back and flipped a bean at Ulysses,
whose expression of intent and curious awe changed instantly to the most
sheepish self-consciousness. The familiarity loosened his tongue,
however, and he asked, with a little explosive gasp,--

"Do yuh think they'll ketch 'im?"

"Ketch who?"

"The man that shot gran'pap."

"They've got 'im now."

"Hev they? How'd they ketch 'im?"

"He gave himself up."

"Will they hang 'im?"

The coroner's eyes twinkled.

"Don't you think they'd ought to?"

"You bet!" Ulysses wagged his head with bloodthirsty vehemence.

The great man got up, laughing, and went toward the door, rubbing the
boy's hair the wrong way as he passed him. The hounds followed
languidly, and Ulysses darted up the creaking staircase, and tumbled
into the little attic room where Melissa sat gazing drearily out of the
window.

"They've got 'im!'" he said breathlessly. "They're a-go'n' to hang 'im!"

The girl got up and backed toward the wall, gasping and dizzy.

"Who said so?" she faltered.

"The man downstairs,--the one that came from Loss Anglus."

Melissa put the palms of her outstretched ha