me for the sake of my mother!" he wailed. "You are free to go! I give you your life. You are outside of the pickets, outside of danger. Go, and be quick about it!" And at that moment Frank James fired a pistol shot upward through the branches of the oak, and the fair haired boy soldier disappeared in the darkness--spared for the sake of his mother by the youthful desperado. Frank James returned to his comrades. They had heard the shot and naturally concluded that it meant one more life ended. Frank assumed a grave expression. "Quick work," remarked a comrade. "Yes," returned the Guerrilla, "babies and boys are not hard to kill." He never spoke of that better deed he performed out there, with only the stars and God as witnesses. [Illustration: A Deed of Mercy.] And the border strife went on. Frank and Jesse rode with Quantrell, sometimes with Todd and Poole, then again they fought at unexpected times by the side of John Jarrette, and Bill Anderson, and Arch Clements. One week they would be charging Blunt's Body Guard in Southeastern Kansas; the next they would ambush a moving column of Federal militia in Lafayette, or Jackson county, Missouri. It was fighting--cruel, savage fighting, all the while. In the bottom lands along the Blue, or among the Sni hills, when hotly pursued, they would find hiding places, from whence they emerged only to deal out destruction and death. Down to Texas, marching with the close of autumn, like migratory birds, they returned to their old haunts with the bright spring days. Deceiving and cutting to pieces Lieut. Nash's small command in the road west of Warrensburg, on a Monday, we hear of their successfully ambushing a column of Union militia on the banks of the Little Blue on the succeeding Wednesday, and a few days afterwards we hear of Frank and Jesse playing "the trumps" of revolver bullets among a squad of rollicking soldier gamesters at Camden; then again they are heard of with Todd, riding down the road from Independence toward Harrisonville, where, seven miles from the former place, they encounter Captain Wagner, of the Second Colorado Cavalry, and engage in a terrible hand-to-hand conflict in which Jesse James takes the life of the Captain, and with his deadly aim sends seven of Wagner's men to the bourne of the dead. On the same occasion Frank, riding furiously among the Federal cavalrymen, deals death to eight of them. So the spring and summer of 1864 was passing with these men engaged in deeds of blood. It was in the last days of July of 1864, that Arch Clements and Jesse James were riding along a country road one evening, when they discovered four militiamen in an orchard gathering apples. Two of the men were in one tree and two in another. Without ceremony the Guerrillas shot them as they would have shot squirrels from a forest tree, and jested of the deed as they might have jested over the fall of wild beasts.