' _you_--an' _you_!"

"We don't aim ter give him no chanst," interrupted Joyce, and it was
then that Sim Squires branched into unanticipated ways.

Suddenly this amazing witness ripped off his mask and threw aside his
hat. Then he spat out the pebble that interfered with his enunciation
and annoyed him, and like the epilepsy victim who slides abruptly from
sane normality into his madness, the man became transformed. The
timidities that had fettered him and held him a slave to cowardice were
swept away like unconsidered drift on the tide of a passion that was
willing to court death, if vengeance could come first. He had definitely
crossed the line of allegiance and meant to swing the fatal fury of that
mob from one victim to another, or die in his effort to that end. His
eyes were the ember pupils of the madman or the martyr, his face was the
frenzied face of a man to whom ordinary considerations no longer count;
whose idea as fixed and single, and to whom personal consequences have
become unimportant. His body was rigid yet vibrant, and his voice rang
through the room as his finger rose and pointed into the face of Bas
Rowlett.

"Thet man," he shouted, "hes bore ther semblance of yore friend, but he
aims ter _dee_stroy ye.... I knows because I've done been his slave an'
he's told me so ... he aims ter hev ye murder Parish Thornton fer him
fust ... an' then ter penitenshery ye fer doin' his dirty work. Ye
hain't nothin' on God's green y'arth but only his dupes!"

Squires paused for breath, and instead of the clamour and outcry for
which he had braced himself he encountered a hushed stillness through
which he could hear the hammering of his own heart.

Rowlett had started to bellow out an enraged denial, but he had swiftly
reconsidered and chosen instead to treat the accusation with a quieter
and more telling contempt. Now he laughed derisively as he turned toward
Joyce.

"I reckon," he suggested, "I don't even need ter gainsay no sich damn
lie es thet, does I?"

But of late there had been so much traitorousness that no man knew whom
he could trust. Now to Rowlett's astonished discomfiture he recognized
the stern and ominous note of doubt in Joyce's response.

"Ef I was you, I wouldn't only gainsay hit, but I'd strive master hard
ter _prove_ my denial."

"I hain't done yit," shouted Sim with a new vigour of aggressiveness,
and at the sight of this human hurricane which had developed out of a
man heretofore rega