e bread and wine of many latitudes, and perhaps in all
of them life had been more kindly than in the mountains of his birth,
yet no child could be more homesick. He wanted to parade before the
pinch of his neighbour's poverty the little prizes of his ignoble
success--and, more than that, he wanted something else.

But when the sun was dropping back of San Cristobal's cone he stood on a
cobble-stoned street on the outskirts of Lima, cursing under his breath
with a torn envelope in his hand. His letter had not brought him good
news.

The communication, in the first place, had not come from the man to whom
he had written, though he grudgingly admitted that perhaps this
vicarious reply was essential to caution.

"To come back here now would be the most heedless thing in the world, he
says." That had been the hateful gist culled from the detail. The "he
says" must refer to the unnamed attorney, to whom Saul had made the
confession which gave value to his evidence against Asa Gregory.

If Asa were free, of course he knew that to return to Marlin County
would be to ask insistently for death--and not to ask in vain. But Asa
lay securely immured behind jail walls which would not be apt to open
for him unless to let him pass into the still safer walls of the
penitentiary or out into the cemented yard where the gallows stood.

The forces of the prosecution owed him something. They owed him so much
that he had walked in no terror of extradition, or even, after a prudent
absence, molestation at home. Technically of course he still stood
charged as an accomplice to murder who had forfeited his bond, but there
may be divergences between a technical and an actual status. The
attorney who preferred now not to be quoted had doubtless discussed the
matter with the Commonwealth, and that the Commonwealth had no wish to
hound him was indicated by this passing on of the advice "ride wide."

Who then stood between him and a safe return to the State he had served
with vital testimony? This letter told him in the none too elegant
phrasing of a friend from the hills.

"Asa himself won't bother you unless the Governor pardons him
out--and the Governor ain't likely to do that. He's the man
that went in when Goebel died. I say he ain't likely to pardon
Asa--but still there has been some changes here. The Democrat
party has had some quarrels inside itself. The Louisville crowd
has been kicked out by this same gov