t of leaves; but as the brother of Enos was just capping his
swiftly reloaded gun--

"Throw up your hands!" cried Parson Tombs, laying his aged eye along the
sights of March's rifle; the hands went up and in a moment were in the
clutch of the town marshal, while a growing crowd ran from the prisoner
and from Champion to John March, who knelt with Parson Tombs beside the
dead man, moaning,

"O good Lord! good Lord! this needn't 'a' been! O Enos, I'd better 'a'
killed you myself! O great God, why didn't I keep this from happening,
when I----"

Someone close to him, stooping over the dead under pretence of feeling
for signs of life, murmured, "Stop talking." Then to the Parson, "Take
him away with you," and then rising spoke across to Garnet, "Howdy,
Major," with the old smile that could be no one's but Ravenel's. He and
Garnet walked away together.

"Died of a gunshot wound received by accident," the coroner came and
found. John March and the minister had gone into March's office, but
Captain Champion's word was quite enough. It was nearly tea-time when
John and the Parson came out again. The sidewalk was empty. As John
locked the door he felt a nail under his boot, picked it up, and seeming
not to realize his own action at all, stepped to the sidewalk's edge,
found a loose stone and went back to the door, all the time saying,

"No, sir, I've made it perfectly terrible to think of God and a
hereafter, but somehow I've never got so low down as to wish there
wa'n't any. I--" his thumb pressed the nail into its hole in the corner
of his sign--

"I do lots of things that are wrong, awfully wrong, though sometimes I
feel--" he hammered it home with the stone--"as if I'd rather"--he did
the same for the other two and the thumb-tack--"die trying to do right
than live,--well,--this way. But--" tossing away the stone and wiping his
hands--"that's only sometimes, and that's the very best I can say."

They walked slowly. The wind had ceased. By the _Courier_ office John
halted.

"Supper! O excuse me, Mr. Tombs really! I--I can't sir!--I--I'll eat at
the hotel. I've got to see a gentleman on business. But I pledge you my
word, sir, I'll come to the meeting." They shook hands. "You're mighty
kind to me, sir."

The gentleman he saw on business was Ravenel. They supped together in a
secluded corner of the Swanee Hotel dining-room, talking of Widewood and
colonization, and by the time their cigars were brought--by an
obsequio