partner.

"Are you goin' to let him insult us?" asked Mosely in the tone of a
wronged man.

"That don't go down, stranger," said Jim Brown. "We know you're guilty,
and that's enough."

"You know it? How do you know it?" retorted Dewey. "What proof is there
except the word of two thieves and liars who deserve the fate which you
are preparing for us?"

"Hang 'em up!" shouted somebody; and the cry was taken up by the rest.

"If you won't believe me," continued Dewey, "I want to make one
appeal--to ask one last favor. Spare the life of that innocent boy, who
certainly has done no evil. If there are any fathers present I ask, Have
you the heart to take away the life of a child just entering upon life
and its enjoyments?"

He had touched the chord in the hearts of more than one.

"That's so!" cried the speaker who had tried to stem the popular
excitement. "It would be a crime and a disgrace, and I'll shoot the man
that puts the rope 'round the boy's neck."

"You're right," cried three others, who themselves had left children in
their distant homes. "The boy's life must be saved."

The two men who held Ben in their grasp released him, and our young hero
found himself free. There was a great rush of joy to his heart as he saw
the shadow of death lifted from him, but he was not satisfied that his
life alone should be spared. He resolved to make an appeal in turn.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I am only a boy, but I want to speak a few words,
and those words shall be true."

Ben had been a good speaker at school, and he had unconsciously assumed
the attitude with which he commenced declaiming upon the school-rostrum.

"Hear the boy!" shouted several; and there was a general silence. It was
a new thing to be addressed by a boy, and there was a feeling of
curiosity as to what he would say.

"I want to say this," continued Ben--"that what Mr. Dewey has said is
strictly true. Not one of us is guilty of the crime that has been
charged upon us. The men who have testified against us are thieves, and
robbed us of these very horses, which we finally recovered from them.
May I tell you how it all happened?"

Partly from curiosity, the permission was given, and Ben, in plain,
simple language, told the story of how they had received Mosely and
Hadley hospitably, and awoke in the morning to find that they had stolen
their horses. He also described the manner in which later they tried to
rob Dewey when confined to his bed by sickness