Their hands went up, and crack! crack! crack! in quick succession, three or four or five reports--I don't know how many. At the first shots the Sheriff fell forward on his face. Williams started to run along the side-walk; the groups of men at the corner, through whom he must pass, closed together; then came another report, and at the same moment he stopped, turned slowly half round, and sank down in a heap like an empty sack. I hurried to him; he had fallen almost as a tailor sits, but his head was between his knees. I lifted it gently; blood was oozing from a hole in the forehead. The men were about me; I heard them say: “A derned good shot! Took him in the back of the head. Jarvis kin shoot!” I rose to my feet. Jarvis was standing inside the fence supported by some one; blood was welling from his bared left shoulder. “I ain't much hurt,” he said, “but I guess the Sheriff's got it bad.” The men moved on, drawing me with them, through the gate to where the Sheriff lay. Martin turned him over on his back. They opened his shirt, and there on the broad chest were two little blue marks, each in the centre of a small mound of pink flesh. 4TH APRIL, 1891. * * * * * A MODERN IDYLL. “I call it real good of you, Mr. Letgood, to come and see me. Won't you be seated?” “Thank you. It's very warm to-day; and as I didn't feel like reading or writing, I thought I'd come round.” “You're just too kind for anythin'! To come an' pay me a visit when you must be tired out with yesterday's preachin'. An' what a sermon you gave us in the mornin'--it was too sweet. I had to wink my eyes pretty hard, an' pull the tears down the back way, or I should have cried right out--and Mrs. Jones watchin' me all the time under that dreadful bonnet.” Mrs. Hooper had begun with a shade of nervousness in the hurried words; but the emotion disappeared as she took up a comfortable pose in the corner of the small sofa. The Rev. John Letgood, having seated himself in an armchair, looked at her intently before replying. She was well worth looking at, this Mrs. Hooper, as she leaned back on the cushions in her cool white dress, which was so thin and soft and well-fitting that her form could be seen through it almost as clearly as through water. She appeared to be about eighteen years old, and in reality was not yet twenty. At first sight one would have said of her, “a pretty girl;” but an observant eye on the second glance would have noticed those contradictions in face and in form which bear witness to a certain complexity of nature. Her features were small, regular, and firmly cut; the long, brown eyes looked out confidently under straight, well-defined brows; but the forehead was low, and the sinuous lips a vivid red. So, too, the slender figure and narrow hips formed a contrast with the throat, which pouted in soft, white fulness.