haunted eyes.

"They're _facts_," he protested. "Ye kin use them facts, only ye mustn't
tell no man whar ye got 'em from."

"Go ahead, then," decided Hump Doane after weighing the proposition even
further. "I'm hearkenin', an' I stands pledged ter hold my counsel es
ter yore part in tellin' me."

The sun was sinking toward the horizon and the woods were cold. The
informer rose and walked back and forth on the soggy carpet of rotted
leaves with hands that clasped and unclasped themselves at his back. He
was under a stress of feeling that bordered on collapse.

The dog that has been kicked and knocked about from puppyhood has in it
the accumulated viciousness of his long injuries. Such a beast is ready
to run amuck, frothing at the mouth, and Sim Squires was not unlike that
dog. He had debated this step through days and nights of hate and
terror. He had faltered and vacillated. Now he had come, and the
long-repressed passions had broken all his dams of reserve, transforming
him, as if with an epilepsy. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks were
putty-yellow and, had he been a dog instead of a man, his fangs would
have been slathered with foam.

Heretofore he had spoken hesitantly and cautiously. Now like the
epileptic or the mad dog, he burst into a volcanic outpouring in which
wild words tumbled upon themselves in a cataract of boiling abandon. His
fists were clenched and veins stood out on his face.

"I'm ther man thet shot Parish Thornton when he fust come hyar," was his
sensational beginning, "but albeit my hand sighted ther gun an' pulled
ther trigger hit was another man's damn dirty heart that contrived ther
act an' another man's dollars thet paid fer hit. I was plum fo'ced ter
do hit by a low-lived feller thet hed done got me whar he wanted me--a
feller thet bull-dozed an' dogged me an' didn't suffer me ter call my
soul my own--a feller thet I hates an' dreads like I don't nuver expect
ter hate Satan in hell!"

The informer broke off there and stood a pitiable picture of rage and
cowardice, shaken with tearless sobs of unwonted emotion.

"Some men ruins women," he rushed on, "an' some ruins other men. _He_
done thet ter me--an' whenever I boggled or balked he cracked his whip
anew--an' I wasn't nuthin' but his pore white nigger thet obeyed him. I
ached ter kill him an' I didn't even dast ter contrary him. His name's
Bas Rowlett!"

The recital broke off and the speaker stood trembling from head to foot.
Th