ean it?"

"I do."

"Then," said the prisoner, quietly, "I reckon I'll stop and hear what
you've got to say about God until they're ready."

"You refuse to fly?"

"I reckon I was never better fitted to die than now," said the
prisoner, still grasping his hand. After a pause he added in a lower
tone, "I can't pray--but--I think," he hesitated, "I think I could
manage to ring in a hymn."

"Will you try, brother?"

"Yes."

With their hands tightly clasped together, Gideon lifted his gentle
voice. The air was a common one, familiar in the local religious
gatherings, and after the first verse one or two of the sullen
lookers-on joined unkindly in the refrain. But, as he went on, the air
and words seemed to offer a vague expression to the dull lowering
animal emotion of the savage concourse, and at the end of the second
verse the refrain, augmented in volume and swelled by every voice in
the camp, swept out over the hollow plain.

It was met in the distance by a far-off cry. With an oath taking the
place of his supplication, the leader sprang to his feet. But too
late! The cry was repeated as a nearer slogan of defiance--the plain
shook--there was the tempestuous onset of furious hoofs--a dozen
shots--the scattering of the embers of the camp-fire into a thousand
vanishing sparks even as the lurid gathering of savage humanity was
dispersed and dissipated over the plain, and Gideon and the prisoner
stood alone. But as the sheriff of Contra Costa with his rescuing
posse swept by, the man they had come to save fell forward in Gideon's
arms with a bullet in his breast--the Parthian shot of the flying
Vigilante leader.

The eager crowd that surged around him with outstretched helping hands
would have hustled Gideon aside. But the wounded man roused himself,
and throwing an arm around the young preacher's neck, warned them back
with the other. "Stand back!" he gasped. "He risked his life for
mine! Look at him, boys! Wanted ter stand up 'twixt them hounds and
me and draw their fire on himself! Ain't he just hell?" he stopped; an
apologetic smile crossed his lips. "I clean forgot, pardner; but it's
all right. I said I was ready to go; and I am." His arm slipped from
Gideon's neck; he slid to the ground; he had fainted.

A dark, military-looking man pushed his way through the crowd--the
surgeon, one of the posse, accompanied by a younger man fastidiously
dressed. The former bent over the unconscious prison