each other. That's what happened. They re-_cog_-nized him and
raised up on him and let him have it. What they done it with, I don't
know; we took everything in that line off of 'em; prob'ly used railroad
iron; and what they done with him afterwards we don't know; but we will
by night. They'll sweat it out of 'em up at Rouen when they get 'em."

"I reckon maybe some of us might help," remarked Mr. Watts,
reflectively.

Jim Bardlock swore a violent oath. "That's the talk!" he shouted. "Ef I
ain't the first man of this crowd to set my foot in Roowun, an' first to
beat in that jail door, an' take 'em out an' hang 'em by the neck till
they're dead, dead, dead, I'm not Town Marshal of Plattville, County of
Carlow, State of Indiana, and the Lord have mercy on our souls!"

Tom Martin looked at the brown stain and quickly turned away; then he
went back slowly to the village. On the way he passed Warren Smith.

"Is it so?" asked the lawyer.

Martin answered with a dry throat. He looked out dimly over the sunlit
fields, and swallowed once or twice. "Yes, it's so. There's a good deal
of it there. Little more than a boy he was." The old fellow passed his
seamy hand over his eyes without concealment. "Peter ain't very bright,
sometimes, it seems to me," he added, brokenly; "overlook Bodeffer and
Fisbee and me and all of us old husks, and--and--" he gulped suddenly,
then finished--"and act the fool and take a boy that's the best we had.
I wish the Almighty would take Peter off the gate; he ain't fit fer it."

When the attorney reached the spot where the crowd was thickest, way
was made for him. The old colored man, Xenophon, approached at the
same time, leaning on a hickory stick and bent very far over, one hand
resting on his hip as if to ease a rusty joint. The negro's age was
an incentive to fable; from his appearance he might have known the
prophets, and he wore that hoary look of unearthly wisdom many decades
of superstitious experience sometimes give to members of his race.
His face, so tortured with wrinkles that it might have been made of
innumerable black threads woven together, was a living mask of the
mystery of his blood. Harkless had once said that Uncle Xenophon had
visited heaven before Swedenborg and hell before Dante. To-day, as he
slowly limped over the ties, his eyes were bright and dry under the
solemn lids, and, though his heavy nostrils were unusually distended in
the effort for regular breathing, the deeply