“Hold on! I jumped off the Sacramento boat--I was goin' down the third time--they thought on the boat I was gone--they think so now! But a passin' fisherman dived for me. I grappled him--he was clear grit and would have gone down with me, but I couldn't let him die too--havin' so to speak no cause. You follow me--you understand me? I let him save me. But it was all the same, for when I got to 'Frisco I read as how I was drowned. And then I reckoned it was all right, and I wandered HERE, where I wasn't known--until I saw you.” “But why should you want to die?” said Wayne, almost fiercely. “What right have you to die while others--double-dyed and blood-stained, are condemned to live, 'testify,' and suffer?” The dying man feebly waved a deprecation with his maimed hand, and even smiled faintly. “I knew you'd say that. I knew what you'd think about it, but it's all the same now. I did it for you and Safie! I knew I was in the way; I knew you was the man she orter had; I knew you was the man who had dragged her outer the mire and clay where I was leavin' her, as you did when she fell in the water. I knew that every day I lived I was makin' YOU suffer and breakin' HER heart--for all she tried to be gentle and gay.” “Great God in heaven! Will you stop!” said Wayne, springing to his feet in agony. A frightened look--the first that any one had ever seen in the clear eyes of the Bell-ringer of Angel's--passed over them, and he murmured tremulously: “All right--I'm stoppin'!” So, too, was his heart, for the wonderful eyes were now slowly glazing. Yet he rallied once more--coming up again the third time as it seemed to Wayne--and his lips moved slowly. The preacher threw himself despairingly on the ground beside him. “Speak, brother! For God's sake, speak!” It was his last whisper--so faint it might have been the first of his freed soul. But he only said:-- “You're--followin'--me? You--understand--what--I--mean?” JOHNNYBOY.