Cap'n Tom, twelve years. Not last week."

The mob had left Richard Travis for dead, and in the fury of their
defeat had thought no more of him. But now, the loss of blood, the cool
night air revived him. He sat up, weak, and looked around. Everywhere
bonfires burned. Men were running about. He heard their talk and he knew
all. He was shot through the left lung, so near to his heart that, as he
felt it, he wondered how he had escaped.

He knew it by the labored breathing, by the blood that ran down and half
filled his left boot. But his was a constitution of steel--an athlete, a
hunter, a horseman, a man of the open. The bitterness of it all came
back to him when he found he was not dead as he had hoped--as he had
made Jack Bracken shoot to do.

"To die in bed at last," he said, "like a monk with liver complaint--or
worse still--my God, like a mad dog, unless--unless--her lips--Helen!"

He lay quite still on the soft grass and looked up at the stars. How
comfortable he was! He felt around.

A boy's overcoat was under him--a little round-about, wadded up, was his
pillow.

He smiled--touched: "What a man he will make--the brave little devil!
Oh, if I can live to tell him he is mine, that I married his mother
secretly--that I broke her heart with my faithlessness--that she died
and the other is--is her sister."

He heard the clamor and the talk behind him. The mob, cool now, were
laying their plans only on revenge,--revenge with the torch and the
bullet.

Jud Carpenter was the leader, and Travis could hear him giving his
orders. How he now loathed the man--for somehow, as he thought, Jud
Carpenter stood for all the seared, blighted, dead life behind
him--all the old disbelief, all the old infamy, all the old doubt and
shame. But now, dying, he saw things differently. Yonder above him
shone the stars and in his heart the glory of that touch of God--the
thing that made him wish rather to die than have it leave him again
to live in his old way.

He heard the mob talking. He heard their plans. He knew that Jud
Carpenter, hating the old preacher as he did, would rather kill him
than any wolf of the forest. He knew that neither Tom Travis nor the
old preacher could ever hope to come out alive.

The torches were ready--the men were aligned in front with deadly
shotguns.

"When the fire gets hot," he heard Jud Carpenter say, "they'll hafter
come out--then shoot--shoot an' shoot to kill. See our own dead!"

They answ