"Quick, ma! blow the horn for pa!" she said, then sprang up on a chair and took down her father’s shot-gun from over the door, a trusty weapon he loved next to his wife and daughter. "Don’t you come enny nigher till you tell what you want," she said clearly, raising the gun in her none too steady hands as they scrambled over the fence. For a moment they were nonplussed, and stared at her with a mixture of surprise and uncertainty. "We want the man that’s hid in there," said one lowering fellow, fiercely. "What for?" "To hang to the nearest tree." "What’s he been a-doin’?" "Killin’ a friend of our’n down on the railroad." The horror of it almost took her breath, but she maintained her defensive attitude bravely. "That’s er turrible thing," she said, praying that every blast of the horn would bring her father. "See here, young woman, you’d better get outen that and let us have him. We don’t mean no harm to you, but we ain’t got time to argue with you." "I’m plum’ sorry for you, but I’m bound ter do what I kin fer the law. We air peaceable folks here, an’ like ter be punished ’cordin’ ter law. If you’ll git the jestice o’ the peace an’ have Mr. Sanders tuk ter jail, I ain’t no objections." Their wrath was evidently cooling somewhat, and they were forced to a reluctant admiration of her pluck. If they had known that she was trembling like a leaf, that her arms were feeling nerveless and weak, her eyes dim! She knew that she could not hold out much longer in that threatening attitude. A moment of dead silence fell while the men consulted in whispers, and Bet could hear the deep, hurried breathing of the hidden man, and the horrified moans and ejaculations of her mother with a distinctness absolutely painful to her. But help had come. Her strained eyes wandered despairingly from those dark, angry faces confronting her, and she saw her father and two or three other men coming through the lot. Matters were at last peaceably adjusted. Mr. Crow argued so mildly and reasonably with the avenging party that they consented—the farmers bearing them company—to take their prisoner and allow the law to deal with him. "But I’ll tell you what, Sanders, you owe your life to that girl. We would ’a’ killed you, sure, if she hadn’t ’a’ stood up in your defense like she did. We didn’t want to hurt her," said one of the men grimly, and Sanders groaned heavily. He gave Bet one humbly grateful glance as they led him away. The whole occurrence occupied but a brief space of time in the bright summer day. The dust settled softly upon the road behind the retreating footsteps of the self-appointed posse and their prisoner, and the crickets shrilling in the grass seemed the only living thing left. Bet sank down on the doorstep, and hid her face in her hands, faint and weak from the strain upon her nerves.