“I perceive,” said the Judge, surveying the tempting viands, “that Mac has thoughtfully cut your meat for you. You are provided with many spoons, but neither knife nor fork. A wise and wholesome precaution, I may remark. After your recent exploit we stand quite in awe of you. Pray be seated. I will take a cup of coffee with you--if you will allow me? “It will not have escaped a man of your penetration that an obvious course was open to me. But your gallantry had quite won my heart, and I refrained from that obvious course, though strongly urged to it. Mac, tell Mr. Bransford what your advice was.” “I said: ‘Dead men tell no tales!’” replied Mac sturdily. “And I say it again. Yon is a fearsome man.” “You are a dangerous man yourself, Mac. Yet I trust you. And why? Because,” said the Judge cooingly, “I am more dangerous still--leader by right of the strongest. I admire you, Mr. Bransford; I needed such a man as you seem to be. Moreover, singular as it may seem, I boggled at cutting you off in cold blood. I have as good a heart as can be made out of brains. You had not intentionally harmed me; I bore you no grudge; it seemed a pity. I decided to give you a chance. I refused this advice. If you but knew it, Mr. Bransford, you owe me a heavy debt of gratitude. So we brought you across quite unostentatiously. That brings us up to date. “You see the logic of the situation, my dear fellow? Your silence must be insured. Either you must throw in your lot with us, commit yourself entirely and irrevocably to us, or suffer the consequences of--shall we say, your indiscretion?” The Judge sipped his coffee daintily. “It is distressing even to mention the alternative; it is needless to lay undue emphasis upon it; circumstances have already done that. You see for yourself that it must be thus, and not otherwise.” Jeff took a toothpick, pushed his chair back and crossed his legs comfortably. “I must have time to consider the matter and look at it from all sides,” he said meditatively. “But I can tell you now how it strikes me at first blush. Do you believe in presentiments, Judge?” The Judge shook his head. “I am singularly free from all superstition.” “Now, I do,” said Jeff steadily, his face wearing as engaging an expression as its damaged condition would permit. “And I have a very strong presentiment that I shall see you hung, or perhaps I should say, hanged.” The Judge went off in another peal of laughter. Even the saturnine Mac relaxed to a grim smile. The Judge pounded on the table. “But what a droll dog it is!” he cried. “Positively, I like you better every moment. Such high spirits! Such hardihood! Really, we need you, we must have you. I cannot imagine any one better fitted to fill the place of the departed brother whom you--as the instrument of an inscrutable and all-wise Providence--have removed from our midst.”