"I followed Mr. Fair," breathlessly. She dropped to her knees beside his chair and went on, "He told Sheriff Starnes everything over the phone. They'd already found out about the escape, and Deputy Sheriff Howard Cartwright'll be here with a posse before very long. And--listen! The office safe has been dynamited and robbed! Mr. Fair found your gloves and flashlight lyin' on the floor, Little Buck, and he thinks you did it! He thinks that's why you stayed behind. He told the sheriff it was you. Oh, I'm so sorry; it seems that the--the Lord is tryin' to see how much you can bear!" "I heard the explosion that opened the safe," Wolfe told Tot. "How I wish I'd investigated then!" [Illustration] He felt through one of his pockets after another. Both gloves and flashlight were gone. "I must have left them in the locomotive's cab," he reasoned aloud, "and some ransacker found them. Afterward the ransacker found the dynamite in the tool-house, and the safe in the office. It all fits in very nicely, Tot." "Yes. How much money was there in the safe?" she asked. "Twenty-eight hundred." He went to his feet, and at that instant his father appeared on the veranda. Old Buck walked slowly and with considerable pain. He had overheard the conversation between his son and the daughter of old Alex Singleton. "The fire it was all my fault," he confessed. "Ef it hadn't ha' been fo' me, nothin' wouldn't ha' been set afire at all. I headed the whole thing, me and a kag o' licker did. Tot, I want you to go and tell Oliver and Brian and the others 'at they must light a rag out o' here and keep from a-bein' arrested. Tell 'em to go away back to the Balsam Cone section. Their wimmenfolks and children can foller 'em atter a little while. I made this here debt, and I'll pay it all myself. Tell 'em that, Tot, please." Tot Singleton looked questioningly toward Little Buck, who said no word, gave no sign. "Please, Tot," the old hillman begged, "go and tell Oliver and Brian and the rest what I said. The debt it's all mine, and I hain't a-goin' to let nobody else pay none of it. Please go, Tot!" "Must I?" Tot whispered to Little Buck. She had no answer whatever. After half a minute of waiting, she disappeared in the rainy night. A quarter of an hour afterward, the clan stole hurriedly up to its leader. Old Buck asked them to go while there was yet time. But they would not agree to it. They wouldn't be yellow. One man should not pay all of the debt to the law. "Ef you'd jest go along wi' us, Buck," finally said Brian Wolfe, "then we might go." "But I cain't hardly walk!" Old Buck exclaimed. "I'd be nothin' but a drawback and dead weight on ye. Go on, boys! You cain't resk a-bein' sent to the State penitenchy, a-leavin' yore famblies to make their own way; don't ye see? It hain't fair to 'em! Yore fust duty lays to yore wimmenfolks and children, boys; hain't ye got hoss sense enough to know that much?"