o
his feet.

"Mr. Chairman, an extraordinary state of affairs has arisen. You have
not forgotten that I plead for charity for Mr. Bidwell, because it was
his first offence. My plea was not well received, but my sentiments
are unchanged, and I now make the same plea for Mr. Ruggles and on the
same grounds. When he was denouncing in fitting terms the sin of
Bidwell, he had no thought of committing the crime himself, but in
his earnestness he did. This being plain to all of us, I renew----"

Wade Ruggles bounded to his feet.

"I don't want any one to plead for me! I ain't pleading fur myself! I
can take my medicine like a man; if there's any galoot here----"

He suddenly checked himself with an apprehensive glance at the door of
the rear room, and then resumed in a more subdued voice:

"I insist that Al Bidwell shall suffer for his onspeakable crime and
me too, 'cause mine was onspeakabler. Jedgin' from the evidence that
showed itself, I must have awoke the little gal from peaceful slumber,
by them awful words of mine."

He paused and looked inquiringly at the chairman, who calmly returned
his gaze, without speaking. It was Parson Brush who interposed:

"I should like to ask, Mr. Dawson, whether the supposition of Mr.
Ruggles has any foundation in fact."

"It has; when I asked Nellie what caused her to awake, she said it was
Mr. Ruggles when he used those bad words."

"Just what I thought!" exclaimed Ruggles, as if he enjoyed heaping
fire upon his own head; "there ain't any depth of infamy which I
hain't reached. For me to try to sneak out now, when I made such
a----(Here he again threw a startled glance at the rear of the room)
would be to do something which Wade Ruggles never done in his
variegated career of nigh onto forty years. All I ask is that you'll
git through it as soon as you kin and fix our terms of imprisonment or
our deaths and hev done with it."

Al Bidwell took an unworthy delight in prodding the man who had been
so severe upon him.

"I beg humbly to suggest to the gent that there are plenty of places
in the mountains where he can make a jump of a thousand feet or two
into the kenyons. Wouldn't it be a good idee fur the gent to try it?"

"I will if you'll join me," retorted Wade, turning upon him like a
flash.

"I'll let you try it first and see how it works," replied Bidwell, so
crushed that he remained silent henceforward.

"Since I am chairman," said Dawson, with becoming dignity, "it i