your heart out!'
And naterally, Tommy, he can't do it. And so I cuts his heart out, my
boy; I cuts his heart out."

The purely animal fury of his eye suddenly changed again to cunning.
"You think they hangs me for it, Tommy, but they don't. Not much, Tommy.
I goes to the biggest lawyer there, and I says to him, 'Salviated by
merkery,--you hear me,--salviated by merkery.' And he winks at me,
and he goes to the judge, and he sez, 'This yer unfortnet man isn't
responsible,--he's been salviated by merkery.' And he brings witnesses;
you comes, Tommy, and you sez ez how you've seen me took bad afore; and
the doctor, he comes, and he sez as how he's seen me frightful; and the
jury, without leavin' their seats, brings in a verdict o' justifiable
insanity,--salviated by merkery."

In the excitement of his climax he had risen to his feet, but would have
fallen had not Tommy caught him and led him into the open air. In
this sharper light there was an odd change visible in his yellow-white
face,--a change which caused Tommy to hurriedly support him, half
leading, half dragging him toward the little cabin. When they had
reached it, Tommy placed him on a rude "bunk," or shelf, and stood for
a moment in anxious contemplation of the tremor-stricken man before him.
Then he said rapidly: "Listen, Uncle Ben. I'm goin' to town--to town,
you understand--for the doctor. You're not to get up or move on any
account until I return. Do you hear?" Johnson nodded violently. "I'll be
back in two hours." In another moment he was gone.

For an hour Johnson kept his word. Then he suddenly sat up, and began
to gaze fixedly at a corner of the cabin. From gazing at it he began to
smile, from smiling at it he began to talk, from talking at it he began
to scream, from screaming he passed to cursing and sobbing wildly. Then
he lay quiet again.

He was so still that to merely human eyes he might have seemed asleep
or dead. But a squirrel, that, emboldened by the stillness, had entered
from the roof, stopped short upon a beam above the bunk, for he saw that
the man's foot was slowly and cautiously moving toward the floor, and
that the man's eyes were as intent and watchful as his own. Presently,
still without a sound, both feet were upon the floor. And then the bunk
creaked, and the squirrel whisked into the eaves of the roof. When he
peered forth again, everything was quiet, and the man was gone.

An hour later two muleteers on the Placerville Road pass