“Naw, suh. Dey fetch me to de calaboose on Sunday mawnin’ an’ dem two coons come in late Sunday night. I never seed ary one of ’em befo’.” “If I let you out will you leave town right away?” “Bless gracious, boss,” Mobile exclaimed with most obvious sincerity, “ef you lets me outen dis jail, I’ll put dis town so fur behine me back dat it’ll cost you ninety-seben dollars to send me a postich card.” The sheriff laughed. “I means it, boss,” Mobile assured him. “Jes gimme a shirt an’ a pair of britches so I won’t look like I was jes’ bawned, an’ I’ll shore ax you good-by!” The sheriff led the negro across to the office in the court-house, opened a closet, pawed over some old hunting clothes, and found some suitable garments for Mobile. When the negro had put them on, the sheriff handed him a silver dollar and said: “Now, Mobile, I’ve let you out because the chances are those other two negroes are going to be mobbed. You are innocent and I don’t want to see you strung up. You’d better hit the grit!” Mobile did. He went down the levee at a gait which bid fair to carry him very far in a brief time--if he could keep it up. Then the sheriff returned to the jail and sat down in the same place. The town of Kerlerac was deserted except for the women and children. Practically every male inhabitant had joined the most exciting of all chases--the man-hunt. The sheriff placed a cigar in his mouth, chewed it almost to the other end without lighting it, then spat it out. “When that searching party finds their dead dogs and drinks up all their red liquor,” he reasoned to himself, “and come back to town and find those coons in jail, they’ll form a mob. My deputies will desert the crowd when the mob forms, but they won’t join me. It’s up to me to protect the coons.” The town-clock struck two. Far down the road, Sheriff Ulloa heard the piercing yell of the fox-hunter. “They’re coming back,” he muttered. Taking a large pistol from the holster under his arm, he examined it carefully, revolving the cylinder between his thumb and finger. A tiny chameleon was playing up and down the bark of a tree twenty feet distant. With a motion which appeared almost careless, Ulloa made a turn of his wrist, there was a loud explosion from the gun, and the little creature spattered into fragments, leaving a dark, wet spot against the tree which looked as if a man had spat at a hole in the bark and made a center shot. The shot aroused the two negroes on the floor above, and the man-hunters heard it and hastened back to town. When the party arrived in Kerlerac they quickly heard of the sheriff’s capture of the fugitives, but not a man came to the sheriff to ask him about the capture. They gathered in a body in the Red Elephant saloon. Soon one of the deputies, white-faced and panting, ran into the sheriff’s presence with the news that a mob was forming on the outskirts of the town.