fter trial
for you. No matter what men think. God knows--God can take care of
the old man.

There on Bess' back Job sat, while the bitter conflict within went on.

It was over at last. He turned Bess' steps toward Pine Mountain and
home. He would face it all--the world's scorn, the old scenes which
seemed each one to pierce anew his heart. He had been down to
Gethsemane; he would climb Calvary.

CHAPTER XXV.

VIA DOLOROSA.

"I tell you he'll come! Don't say that about my boy! It was an
accident--he said so--I heard him! He can explain it all. He saw it!
He'll come!" were the words Job heard Andrew Malden saying as he rode
up to Pine Tree Ranch in the dim light of early morning. The sheriff
and his deputy had come for Job; and, maddened to find him gone, were
cursing the old man and the one they sought.

Andrew Malden, quivering with excitement, tortured by a thousand
fears, wondering if he would come, was defending as best he could the
young man whom he loved, in this awful hour, more than ever before.

Job was close beside them before they saw him. Hitching Bess, he
walked up to the door, saluted the sheriff, and calmly asked:

"Were you looking for me?"

The sight of that pale, manly face for a moment stilled the bluster of
the rough officer of the law, and he almost apologized as he told Job
he was under the painful necessity of taking him to the county jail to
answer to the charge of homicide--the murder of a girl named Jane
Reed. Job winced under the sting of the words. For a moment he felt
like striking the man a blow for mentioning that sacred name; then he
bit his lip, sent up a silent prayer, and said:

"Very well, sir; I will mount my horse and follow you. I know the way
well."

In a flash the burly sheriff whipped the hand-cuffs upon his wrists,
and said:

"Ride! Well, I guess not! You'll play none of your games on me! You
will ride between me and my deputy, Mr. Dean!" And then Job discovered
for the first time that Marshall Dean was eying him with a malicious
grin of satisfaction.

In a moment, seated in the buckboard between the two men, with only
time for a good-by to Bess, a shake of the old man's hand, and never a
moment to explain that the accident he had mentioned had befallen
himself, not Jane, Job Malden rode down over the Pine Tree road,
handcuffed, on his way to the county jail at Gold City.

Past the Miners' Home and the Palace Hotel they drove at last. Bitter
faces gla