ll senses, he
found himself hitched quite securely to the unplaned pillar, bootless,
trouserless and speechless--but above all else astonished. I took one
mean scrap of vengeance which was unnecessary. I went to the grated
shutters and threw the key to the handcuffs out. Then, donning his
clothes before his eyes, since my own would have proclaimed me a
stranger in these parts, I turned and made my way down the stairs, once
more at liberty. I did not vouchsafe him a word of farewell nor turn my
head to look back, though I heard his feet pounding the floor in a
frenzy of rage and futile struggle. Of course, I had possessed myself of
his pistol as well as his hat, boots and trousers.

If I had needed any disguise beyond these clothes it would have been
provided for me by the ragged growth of beard on my face and the unkempt
hair that had not felt a comb since I left the roof of Cal Marcus. I
smiled to myself as I made my exit by the broken porch and thought what
his reflections at the moment must be. He was doubtless recalling his
own explicit directions for reaching the court-house door. It was now
between nine and ten o'clock. If I hurried there might still be time.

The town which I had seen only once before came into view as soon as I
had reached the high road and made the first turn, but I was terrified
to see in the distance two horsemen jogging along in leisurely approach.
I scrambled across the rail fence and lay close to the earth waiting for
them to pass and grudging the flight of each priceless minute. As they
came nearer I heard a whining voice raised in an attempt at song.

"Right down hyar in Adamson Countee--
Where they have no church of our Lord--"

Carroled one of the horsemen, and I joyously recognized the young man
who, on the night of Mrs. Weighborne's arrival, had slipped out into the
shadow of Cal Marcus' kitchen to reconnoiter.

In another moment I had been given a place behind the mountain boy, and
soon the three of us were ambling through the squalid square of the
county seat. Though groups of men stood everywhere, and eyed each other
suspiciously, no one recognized, in the ragged stubble-faced wreck
astride a doubly loaded horse, the kidnaped witness.

They did not take me to the court-room, but made me dismount at the back
door of Cal Marcus' law office, just a stone's throw away across the
narrow street. Marcus, himself, came to me there in response to a
hurried summons. He listene