ose, red hair, and bristling auburn brows that met across his
forehead, the eyes had been those of Carson Wildred.

They were eyes not easy to forget, especially as they blazed defiance
into those of the men who sprang forward to lay hands upon him. "There
stands the murderer, gentlemen, as you see," he had said, making a
gesture towards his young companion, a boy of eighteen or nineteen, who
seemed too astonished and horrified to move. Despite the evidence of the
fallen knife, however, not one among the men who witnessed the end of
the scene believed that the youth was guilty. Murder was in the eyes of
the other, and must have betrayed him, even if the last words of the
dead man had not accused him.

California was somewhat wilder in those days than it is at present, and
men were more ready to act upon impulse. So it was that, as two of us
gripped the fierce, red-haired fellow, another of the party flung some
whispered word to the boy, who had only spoken to murmur brokenly, "God
knows I'm innocent!"

What that whispered word was no one knew save he who spoke it and he to
whom it was addressed. But whatever it might have been, it seemed to
rouse the young man to life and a realisation of his position. With a
leap he was at the long window and had sprung out on to a verandah,
which ran round three sides and three stories of the house. The room was
on the first floor, and it was easy enough for an active young fellow to
let himself down by one of the twisted pillars which supported the
verandah of the lower storey.

It could not have been so easy to escape those who half-heartedly
followed; but the boy must have found some safe sanctuary near by, for
not only did he evade his pursuers, but was never found or brought to
trial.

The other, an Australian, calling himself Willis Collins, known as a
gambler, suspected as a card "sharper," was less fortunate. But for the
cry of the dying man he might have cleared himself; but his reputation
was against him to begin with; it was proved that the other was a young
Englishman who had lost his money through Collins, and been duped by
him, and altogether matters went hardly with the elder of the two
confederates. He was tried and condemned (not for murder, as it
happened, but manslaughter), and sentenced to imprisonment for twenty
years.

The incident had passed out my mind until, on a visit to America six
years later (four years previous to my present one), a man who had bee