men's faces gave me a sudden, sick
thrill. They whispered a word to me, and without a thought, save for
Annie, the girl who had been so surely growing into my heart, I leaped
from the saddle and tore my way through the people to the house.

"It was Annie, poor girl, bruised and bleeding, her face and dress torn
from struggling. They were gathered round her with white faces, and, oh,
with what terrible patience they were trying to gain from her fluttering
lips the name of her murderer. They made way for me and I knelt at her
side. She was beyond my skill, and my will merged with theirs. One
thought was in our minds.

"'Who?' I asked.

"Her eyes half opened, 'That black----' She fell back into my arms dead.

"We turned and looked at each other. The mother had broken down and was
weeping, but the face of the father was like iron.

"'It is enough,' he said; 'Jube has disappeared.' He went to the door
and said to the expectant crowd, 'She is dead.'

"I heard the angry roar without swelling up like the noise of a flood,
and then I heard the sudden movement of many feet as the men separated
into searching parties, and laying the dead girl back upon her couch, I
took my rifle and went out to join them.

"As if by intuition the knowledge had passed among the men that Jube
Benson had disappeared, and he, by common consent, was to be the object
of our search. Fully a dozen of the citizens had seen him hastening
toward the woods and noted his skulking air, but as he had grinned in
his old good-natured way they had, at the time, thought nothing of it.
Now, however, the diabolical reason of his slyness was apparent. He had
been shrewd enough to disarm suspicion, and by now was far away. Even
Mrs. Daly, who was visiting with a neighbour, had seen him stepping out
by a back way, and had said with a laugh, 'I reckon that black rascal's
a-running off somewhere.' Oh, if she had only known.

"'To the woods! To the woods!' that was the cry, and away we went, each
with the determination not to shoot, but to bring the culprit alive into
town, and then to deal with him as his crime deserved.

"I cannot describe the feelings I experienced as I went out that night
to beat the woods for this human tiger. My heart smouldered within me
like a coal, and I went forward under the impulse of a will that was
half my own, half some more malignant power's. My throat throbbed drily,
but water nor whiskey would not have quenched my thirst. The thou