!"

But he might as well have spoken to the swiftly flowing water beneath
the ice of the great river. Of a sudden, from out a passage leading into
the cell-room of the court-house basement, a black swarm of men had
emerged, bearing by sheer animal force a struggling object in their
midst. The silence of those who waited, the lull before the storm, on
the instant ended. A very Babel of voices took its place. By common
consent, as though drawn by centripetal force, actors and spectators
crowded together until they were a solid block of humanity. Caught in
the midst, Grannis and Ben alike could for a moment but move with the
mass. So fierce was the crush that their very breath seemed imprisoned
in their lungs.

Like molten metal the crowd began to flow--to the right, in the
direction of the railroad track. With each passing moment the confusion
was, if possible, greater than before. Here and there a cowboy, unable
to control his excess of feeling, emptied his revolver into the air.
Once Ben heard the wailing yelp of a dog caught under foot of the mass.
To his left, a little man with a white collar, obviously a mere
spectator, pleaded loudly to be released from the pressure. Adding to
the confusion, the bell on the town-hall began ringing furiously.

On they went, a hundred yards, two hundred, reached the railroad track,
stopped. In the midst of the leaders, looming over their heads, was a
whitened telegraph pole. Of a sudden a lariat shot up over the painted
cross-arm, and dropped, the two ends dangling free; and, understanding
it all, the spectators again became silent. Everything moved like
clockwork. From somewhere in the darkness a bare-backed pony was
produced and brought directly under the dangling rope. Astride him a
dark-bearded figure with hands tied behind his back was placed and
firmly held. Swiftly a running noose, fashioned from the ends of the
lariat, was slipped over the captive's neck. A man grasped the bit of
the mustang. Before him, the crowd began to give way. The great
bull-necked leader--Mick Kennedy, every one now saw it was--held up his
hand for silence, and turned to the helpless figure astride the pony.

"Tom Blair!" he said,--and such was now the silence that a whisper would
have been audible,--"Tom Blair, have you anything you wish to say?"

The dark shape took no notice. Apparently it did not hear.

Mick Kennedy hesitated. Upon his lips a repetition of the question was
forming--but it got