k toward the door.

"We've come here to git two criminals hiding illegally in this here
camp," burst out Lupo.

"Have you a warrant for their arrest?"

"We don't need no warrants in these here mountains."

"Oh, yes you do," insisted Richard politely. "Law and order must be
respected just as much on the mountains as in the valleys. People who
don't respect them soon find out what happens."

Two more men slunk toward the door.

"I think," went on Richard, "that you had better follow your friends out
quietly and go to your homes. I am certain most of you have wives who
would be glad to see you again after this dangerous little adventure.
Jail isn't a pleasant place, you know, especially to people who are in
the habit of breathing mountain air."

Only six men remained now of the original number. Even Lupo had been
silenced, but at the mention of wives he flared up again.

"They have taken my wife away from me," he cried, shaking his fist at
the women in the gallery. "They have given her money to leave me. I
ain't so forgivin'."

"Do you want to know the real reason why your wife left you?" said
Richard in a tone of such conviction that Lupo was deceived into
thinking this perfect stranger knew all about him. "She was afraid of
you and your lawless ways. When you have been drinking, as you have
to-night, you're a dangerous man. You begin by breaking into private
houses. You're disorderly and violent. Men like you end in the
penitentiary. You hide yourselves perhaps for a while, but these
mountains are difficult to hide in nowadays. You would be caught sooner
or later, and do you think you'll get much sympathy with the court
after one of these ladies, perhaps, has told the history of to-night's
work? Fifteen years would be a short sentence. Your wife is right, I
think. You're not a very safe companion."

Lupo looked about him bewildered. Only one of the band remained: the
watery-eyed innkeeper.

"I was in the rights of the law," exclaimed Lupo, half-crying as he
crept down the gallery steps.

"I am afraid not," said Richard gently. "But you take a little trip to
another county and get some good honest work, and you will soon find out
how much happier and safer it is to be within the limits of the law.
Decidedly more agreeable than being hunted through the mountains by a
sheriff with his bloodhounds, sleeping out in the cold, going hungry,
slinking around the edges of villages when everybody is asleep for a
cha