e found himself in a room cloudy with tobacco
smoke and crowded with unoccupied chairs--yet empty of any humanity save
for himself and the hunchback who stood inhospitably bulking just beyond
the threshold.

The trap to the cock-loft was open, though, and the ladder was drawn up
so Thornton knew that this seeming of vacancy was specious and that in
all likelihood gun barrels were trained from above.

"I've done come," he said, steadily, and he raised his voice so that it
would also carry to those unseen individuals whom he believed to be
concealed near by, "ter see kin us two carcumvent bloodshed. I bears due
authority from ther Thorntons and ther Harpers. We seeks ter aid ye in
diskiverin' an' punishin' ther man thet sought ter kill Jim Rowlett--if
so be ye'll meet us halfway."

For a moment there was silence in the room, then with a skeptical note
of ridicule and challenge the hunchback demanded: "Why didn't ye go ter
Jim Rowlett hisself?"

Though he had not been invited to enter Parish Thornton took a forward
step into the room, and a bold effrontery proclaimed itself in both the
words and the manner of his response.

"I've done come ter both of ye. I knows full well I'm speakin' right now
in ther hearin' of numerous men hyar--albeit they're hidin' out from
me."

Again there was silence, then Parish Thornton turned his eyes, following
the cripple's gaze, toward the open door and found himself gazing into
the muzzles of two rifles presented toward his breast. He laughed
shortly and commented, "I thought so," then glancing at the cock-loft he
saw other muzzles and in the back door which swung silently open at the
same moment yet others gave back a dull glint of iron from the sunlight,
so that he stood ringed about with levelled guns.

Hump Doane's piercing eyes bored into the face of the intruder during a
long and uneasy silence. Then when his scrutiny had satisfied itself he
asserted with a blunt directness:

"Ye hain't skeercely got no means of knowin' who's inside my house
without ye come by thet knowledge through spyin' on me."

From the darkness of the cock-loft came a passionate voice of such rabid
truculence as sounds in the throat of a dog straining at its leash.

"Jest say one word, Hump ... jest say one word an' he won't know nothin'
a minute hence!... My trigger finger's itchin' right now!"

"Hold yore cacklin' tongue, Sam Opdyke, an' lay aside thet gun," the
cripple barked back with the crack o