.

"We will do it! we will do it! so help me, we will do it!" blubbers
Stumps.

"What is it, John Logan, we can do?"

"I will not fly from here." He looks down tenderly into their faces.
Then he lifts his face. It is dark and terrible, and his lips are set
with resolution. "I will die here. It may be to-night, it may be
to-morrow. It may be as I turn to go out at that door they will send
their bullets through my heart; it may be while I kneel in the snow at
my mother's grave. But, sooner or later, it will come--it will come!"

"But please, John Logan, what is it we can do?"

Her voice is tremulous, and her eyes stream with tears.

"Carrie, I am a man--a strong man--and ought not to ask anything of a
helpless girl. But I have no other friend. I have had no friends. All
the days of my life have been dark and lonely. And now I am about to
die, Carrie, I want you to see that I am buried by my mother yonder. I
am so weary, and I could rest there. And then she, poor broken-hearted
mother, she might not be so lonesome then. Do you promise?"

"I do promise!" and the boy echoes this scarcely audible but determined
answer.

"Thank you--thank you! And now good night. I must be going, lest I draw
suspicion on you. Good night, good night; God bless you, Carrie!"

He presses her to his heart, hastily embraces her, and tearing himself
away, stoops and kisses the boy as he passes to the door. Drawing his
tattered shirt closer about his shoulders, and turning his face as if to
conceal his emotion, he lays his hand upon the latch to suddenly dart
forth.

Two dark figures pass the window, and in a moment more the latch-string
is clutched by a rough, unsteady hand from without.

"Here, here!" cries the girl, as she springs back to the dingy curtain
that divides off a portion of the cabin into a bed-room. "Here! in here!
Quick! quick!" as she draws the curtain aside, and lets it fall over the
retreating fugitive. Forty-nine and Gar Dosson enter. The former is
drunk, and therefore dignified and silent. His companion is drunk, and
therefore garrulous and familiar. Wine floats a man's real nature nearly
to the surface.

Forty-nine lifts his hat, bows politely and respectfully to the
children, brushes his hat with his elbow as he meanders across the floor
to the peg in the wall, but cannot quite trust himself to speak.

"Hullo, Carats!" cries Gar Dosson, as he chucks her under the chin.
"Knowed I was coming, didn't you? Got your