`Wot's that for?' `Scrag
the hunter,' cries one. `Howld yer long tongues, an' hear what he's got
to say,' shouts an Irishman.

"`Keep your minds easy,' says I, mountin' a stump, `an' seize that
Injun, or I'll have to put a ball into him before he gits off'--for, ye
see, I obsarved the black villain took fright, and was sneakin' away
through the crowd. They had no doubt who I meant, for I pinted straight
at him; and, before ye could wink, he was gripped, and led under the
tree, with a face paler than ever I saw the face o' a red-skin before.

"`Now,' says I, `wot for are ye scraggin' this old man?' So they told
me how the party that went off to git the murderer met a band o' injuns
comin' to deliver him up to be killed, they said, for murderin' the
white man. An' they gave up this old Injun, sayin' he wos the murderer.
The diggers believed it, and returned with the old boy and two or three
others that came to see him fixed off.

"`Very good,' says I, `ye don't seem to remimber that I'm the man what
saw the murder, and told ye of it. By good luck, I've come in time to
point him out--an' _this is him_.' An' with that I put the noose round
the villain's neck and drawed it tight. At that he made a great start
to shake it off, and clear away; but before you could wink, he was
swingin' at the branch o' the tree, twinty feet in the air.

"Sarved him right," cried several of the men, emphatically, as the
hunter concluded his anecdote.

"Ay," he continued, "an' they strung up his six friends beside him."

"Sarved 'em right too," remarked the tall man, whose partiality for the
tin wash-hand basin and the tooth-brush we have already noticed. "If I
had my way, I'd shoot 'em all off the face o' the 'arth, I would, right
away."

"I'm sorry to hear they did that," remarked Larry O'Neil looking
pointedly at the last speaker, "for it only shewed they was greater
mortherers nor the Injuns--the red-skins morthered wan man, but the
diggers morthered six.

"An' who are _you_ that finds fault wi' the diggers?" inquired the tall
man, turning full round upon the Irishman, with a tremendous oath.

"Be the mortial," cried the Irishman, starting up like a
Jack-in-the-box, and throwing off his coat, "I'm Larry O'Neil, at yer
sarvice. Hooroo! come on, av' ye want to be purtily worked off."

Instantly the man's hand was on the hilt of his revolver; but, before he
could draw it, the rest of the company started up and overpowered