"So the man, he had to run the farm alone. Now they raised poultry, which his wife had always attended to. And he knew she had a habit of setting hens on duck eggs. He had never inquired her reasons, being shiftless, but that fact he knew. Well, come to investigate the hen-house, there was duck eggs, and hens on 'em, and also a heap of hens' eggs, but no more hens wishing to set. So the man, having no judgment, persuaded a duck to stay with those eggs. Now it's her I'm chiefly interested in. She was a good enough duck, but hasty. When the eggs hatched out, she didn't stop to notice, but up and takes them down to the pond, and gets mad with them, and shoves them in, and they drowns. Next day or two a lot of the young ducks, they hatched out and come down with the hen and got in the water all right, and the duck figured out she'd made some mistake, and she felt distressed. But the chickens were in heaven." The sheriff studied his audience, and saw that he had lulled their rage a little. "Now," said he, "ain't you boys just a trifle like that duck? I don't know as I can say much to you more than what I have said, and I don't know as I can do anything, fixed as I am. This thing looks bad for him we've got here. Why, I can see that as well as you. But, boys! it's an awful thing to kill an innocent man! I saw that done once, and--God forgive me!--I was one of them. I'll tell you how that was. He looked enough like the man we wanted. We were certainly on the right trail. We came on a cabin we'd never known of before, pretty far up in the hills--a strange cabin, you see. That seemed just right; just where a man would hide. We were mad at the crime committed, and took no thought. We knew we had caught him--that's the way we felt. So we got our guns ready, and crept up close through the trees, and surrounded that cabin. We called him to come out, and he came with a book in his hands he'd been reading. He did look like the man, and boys!--we gave him no time! He never knew why we fired. He was a harmless old prospector who had got tired of poor luck and knocking around, and over his door he had painted some words: 'Where the wicked cease from troubling.' He had figured that up there by that mountain stream the world would let him alone. And ever since then I have thought my life belonged to him first, and me second. Now this afternoon I'm alone here. You know I can't do much. And I'm going to ask you to help me respect the law. I don't say that in this big country there may not be places, and there may not be times, when the law is too young or else too rotten to take care of itself, and when the American citizen must go back to bed-rock principles. But is that so in our valley? Why, if this prisoner is guilty, you can't name me one man of your acquaintance who would want him to live. And that being so, don't we owe him the chance to clear himself if he can? I can see that prospector now at his door, old, harmless, coming fearless at