as got him, 'n' thar's his cross thar yit! Whar's yo' gun,
Rome? Shame on ye, boy!"

The wild-eyed old woman was before him. She had divined Rufe's purpose,
and was already at his side, with Rome's Winchester in one hand and a
clasp-knife in the other. Every man was on his feet; the door was open,
and the boy Isom was at the threshold, his eyes blazing from his white
face. Rome had strode forward.

"Yes, boy; now's the time, right hyeh before us all!"

The mother had the knife outstretched. Rome took it, and the scratch of
the point on the hard steel went twice through the stillness--"one more
fer the young un;" the voice was the old mother's--then twice again.

The moon was sinking when Rome stood in the door alone. The tramp of
horses was growing fainter down the mountain. The trees were swaying in
the wind below him, and he could just see the gray cliffs on the other
shore. The morning seemed far away; it made him dizzy looking back to it
through the tumult of the day. Somewhere in the haze was the vision of
a girl's white face--white with distress for him. Her father and her
brother he had sworn to kill. He had made a cross for each, and each
cross was an oath. He closed the door; and then he gave way, and sat
down with his head in both hands. The noises in the kitchen ceased. The
fire died away, and the chill air gathered about him. When he rose, the
restless eyes of the boy were upon him from the shadows.

X

IT was court-day in Hazlan, but so early in the morning nothing was
astir in the town that hinted of its life on such a day. But for the
ring of a blacksmith's anvil on the quiet air, and the fact that nowhere
was a church-spire visible, a stranger would have thought that the
peace of Sabbath overlay a village of God-fearing people. A burly figure
lounged in the porch of a rickety house, and yawned under a swinging
sign, the rude letters of which promised "private entertainment" for
the traveller unlucky enough to pass that way. In the one long, narrow
main street, closely flanked by log and framed houses, nothing else
human was in sight. Out from this street, and in an empty square, stood
the one brick building in the place, the court-house, brick without,
brick within; unfinished, unpencilled, unpainted; panes out of the
windows, a shutter off here and there, or swinging drunkenly on one
hinge; the door wide op en, as though there was no privacy within--a poor
structure, with the look of a good