ified;
ripping away to its unbelievable nakedness all the falsity of Bas
Rowlett's record--a voice of triumph.

In the altered attitudes of the attentive figures the woman could read
that the accuser was no longer talking to a hostile audience, but to one
capriciously grown receptive, and educated to the deceits of the
accused. They knew now how Bas had craftily set the Harpers and the
Doanes at one another's throats, and how Thornton had tranquilized them;
they knew how their own grievances against the man they had come to hang
had been trumped up from carefully nourished misconceptions. But above
all that, they saw how they themselves had been dupes and tools,
encouraged to organize and jeopardize their necks only that they might
act as executioners of Rowlett's private enemy, and then be thrown to
the wolves of the law.

"I come inter this house," declared Sim Squires, "at Bas Rowlett's
behest, ter spy on Parish Thornton--an' I j'ined ther riders fer ther
same reason--but I'm done with lyin' now! Hit's Bas Rowlett thet made a
fool of me an' seeks ter make convicts outen _you_."

He paused; then wheeling once more he walked slowly, step by step, to
where Bas Rowlett stood cowering.

"Ye come hyar ter hang ther wrong man, boys," he shouted, "but ther
right man's hyar--ther rope's hyar, an' ther tree's hyar! Hang Bas
Rowlett!"

There was a silence of grim tension over the room when the accuser's
voice fell quiet after its staccato peroration of incitement. The masked
men gave no betrayal of final sentiment yet, and the woman rose
unsteadily from her chair and pressed her hands against the tumultuous
pounding of her heart. She could not still it while she waited for the
verdict, and scarcely dared yet to hope.

Rowlett had been long trusted, and had there been left in him the
audacity for ten adroitly used minutes of boldness, he might have been
heard that night in his own defence. But Bas had, back of all his brutal
aggressions, a soul-fibre of baseness and it had wilted.

Now, with every eye turned on him, with the scales of his fate still
trembling, the accused wretch cast furtive glances toward the door,
weighing and considering the chances of escape. He abandoned that as
hopeless, opened his lips and let his jaw sag, then crouched back as
though in the shadow of the room's corner he hoped to find concealment.

"Look at him, men!" shouted Sim Squires, following up the wreck of
arrogance who through years ha