our call, because he had no guilt upon his conscience--and we shot him down without a word. Boys! he has the call on me now; and if you insist--" The sheriff paused, satisfied with what he saw on the faces around him. Some of the men knew the story of the prospector--it had been in the papers--but of his part in it they had not known. They understood quite well the sacrifice he stood ready to make now in defending the prisoner. The favorable silence was broken by the sound of horses. Timeliness and discretion were coming up the hill. Drylyn at the same moment came out of the dead woman's tent, and, looking down, realized the intended rescue. With his mind waked suddenly from its dull dream and opened with a human impulse, he ran to help; but the sheriff saw him, and thought he was trying to escape. "That's the man!" he shouted savagely to the ring. Some of the Gap ran to the edge of the hill, and, seeing the hurrying Drylyn and the horses below, also realized the rescue. Putting the wrong two and two together, they instantly saw in all this a well-devised scheme of delay and collusion. They came back, running through the dance-hall to the front, and the sheriff was pinioned from behind, thrown down, and held. "So ye were alone, were ye?" said the chatty neighbor. "Well, ye made a good talk. Keep quiet--we don't want to hurt ye." At this supposed perfidy the Gap's rage was at white-heat again; the men massed together, and fierce and quick as lightning the messenger's fate was wrought. The work of adjusting the rope and noose was complete and death going on in the air when Drylyn, meaning to look the ground over for the rescue, came cautiously back up the hill and saw the body, black against the clear sunset sky. At his outcry they made ready for him, and when he blindly rushed among them they held him, and paid no attention to his ravings. Then, when the rope had finished its work, they let him go, and the sheriff too. The driver's friend had left his horses among the pines, and had come up to see what was going on at the Gap. He now joined the crowd. "You meant well," the sheriff said to him. "I wish you would tell the boys how you come to be here. They're thinking I lied to them." "Maybe I can change their minds." It was Drylyn's deep voice. "I am the man you were hunting," he said. [Illustration: "'I'D LIKE TO HAVE IT OVER'"] They looked at him seriously, as one looks at a friend whom an illness has seized. The storm of feeling had spent itself, the mood of the Gap was relaxed and torpid, and the serenity of coming dusk began to fill the mountain air. "You boys think I'm touched in the head," said Drylyn, and paused. "This knife done it," said he. "This one I'm showing you." They looked at the knife in his hand.