fort, he stooped and lifted the heavy weight
that hung sagging like one newly dead and not yet rigid.

With his burden Parish staggered to the cliff's edge and swung his man
from side to side, gaining momentum.

Then suddenly he stopped and stood silhouetted there, sweat-shiny and
tattered, blood-stained and panting, and instead of pitching Bas Rowlett
outward he laid him down again on the shelf of rock.

How much later he did not know, though he knew that it was twilight now,
Bas Rowlett seemed to come out of a heavy and disturbed sleep in which
there had been no rest, and he found himself lying with his feet hanging
over the precipice edge, and with Thornton looking intently down upon
him. In Thornton's hand was the recovered pistol--so there must have
been time enough for that.

But his perplexed brain reeled to the realization that he still lay up
here instead of among the rocks upon which he should have been broken
two hundred feet below. Presumably the victor had waited for returning
consciousness in the victim to consummate that atrocity.

But Thornton's unaccountable whims had flown at another tangent.

"Git up, Bas," he commanded, briefly, "yore life b'longs ter me. I won
hit--an' ye're goin' ter die--but my fingers don't ache no more fer a
holt on yore throat--they're satisfied."

"What air--ye goin' ter do, now?" Rowlett found words hard to form; and
the victor responded promptly, "I've done concluded ter take ye down
thar, afore ye dies, an' make ye crave Dorothy's pardon on yore bended
knees. Ye owes hit ter her."

Slowly Rowlett dragged himself to a sitting posture. His incredulous
senses wanted to sing out in exultation, but he forced himself to demur
with surly obduracy.

"Hain't hit enough ter kill me without humiliatin' me, too?"

"No, hit hain't enough fer me an' hit's too tardy fer _you_ ter make no
terms now."

Bas Rowlett exaggerated his dizzy weakness. There was every reason for
taking time. This mad idea that had seized upon the other was a miracle
of deliverance for him. If only he could kill time until night had come
and the moon had risen, it would prove not only a respite but a full
pardon--capped with a reserved climax of triumph.

Down there at that house the mob would soon come, and circumstance would
convert him, at a single turn of the wheel, from humbled victim to the
avenger ironically witnessing the execution of his late victor.

After a while he rose and stood experime