the old spirit was no longer the same. The
light-hearted mirth had gone. Indeed, Rosebud was a child no longer. She
was a woman, and it would have surprised these folk to know how
serious-minded the last two days had made her.

"Even a prisoner going to be hanged is allowed to amuse himself as he
pleases during his last hours, Seth," she responded, pitching out the
bedding from under the manger with wonderful dexterity.

Seth flushed, and his eyes were anxious. No physical danger could have
brought such an expression to them. It was almost as if he doubted whether
what he had done was right. It was the doubt which at times assails the
strongest, the most decided. He seemed to be seeking a suitable response,
but his habit of silence handicapped him. At last he said--

"But he's goin' to be hanged."

"And so am I." Rosebud fired her retort with all the force of her
suppressed passion. Then she laughed again in that hollow fashion, and the
straw flew from her fork. "At least I am going out of the world--my world,
the world I love, the only world I know. And for what?"

Seth labored steadily. His tongue was terribly slow.

"Ther's your friends, and--the dollars."

"Friends--dollars?" she replied scornfully, while the horse she was
bedding moved fearfully away from her fork. "You are always thinking of my
dollars. What do I want with dollars? And I am not going to friends. I
have no father and mother but Pa and Ma. I have no friends but those who
have cared for me these last six years. Why has this little man come out
here to disturb me? Because he knows that if the dollars are mine he will
make money out of me. He knows that, and for a consideration he will be
my friend. Oh, I hate him and the dollars!"

The tide of the girl's passion overwhelmed Seth, and he hardly knew what
to say. He passed into another stall and Rosebud did the same. The man was
beginning to realize the unsuspected depths of this girl's character, and
that, perhaps, after all, there might have been another mode of treatment
than his line of duty as he had conceived it. He found an answer at last.

"Say, if I'd located this thing and had done nothin'----" he began. And
she caught him up at once.

"I'd have thanked you," she said.

But Seth saw the unreasonableness of her reply.

"Now, Rosebud," he said gently, "you're talkin' foolish. An' you know it.
What I did was only right by you. I'd 'a' been a skunk to have acted
different. I lit on th