"Now don't you try to be satirical--it's not your specialty. I mean to finish the tale. If you read the paper, you will recall that the shanty where the murder occurred was only a short distance from the mountain-road, and there were three witnesses--Bill Metzger, a dissolute cowboy who was passing, and who, attracted by Wofford's death-cry, ran to the cabin and found Boyd, blood-stained knife in hand, bending over the murdered man; Ed Thorpe, a tramp miner, who heard the same cry and who came up two or three minutes later; and, finally, Tim Williams, a town idler, who was on the mountain-side, hunting. The other two heard him fire his gun a few hundred yards away, and called to him. When he arrived, Boyd was still dazed and muttering to himself, as if overpowered by the horror of his crime." "If that isn't conclusive, then nothing is," said Harley, decisively. "It is not conclusive; there was no real motive for Boyd to do such a thing." "To whom did the knife belong?" "It was a long bread-knife that the two used at the cabin." "There you are! Proof on proof!" "Now, you keep silent, Harley, and come with me, like a good fellow, and see Boyd in the jail. If you don't, I swear I'll pester the life out of you for a week." Harley rose reluctantly, as he knew that Hobart would keep his word. He believed it the idlest of errands, but the jail was only a short distance from them, and the business would not take long. On the way Hobart talked to him about the three witnesses. Metzger, the cowboy, on the day of the murder, had been riding in from a ranch farther down the valley; the other two had been about the town until a short time before the departure of Boyd and Wofford for their cabin. They reached the jail, a conspicuous stone building in the centre of the town, and were shown into the condemned man's cell. The jailer announced them with the statement: "Tim, here's two newspaper fellers from the East wants to see you." The prisoner was lying on a pallet in the corner of his cell, and he raised himself on his elbow when Harley and Hobart entered. "You are writers for the papers?" he said. "Yes, clean from New York; they are with Jimmy Grayson," the jailer answered for them. "I don't know as I've got anythin' to say to you," continued the prisoner. "I 'ain't got no picture to give you, an' if I had one I wouldn't give it. I don't want my hangin' to be all wrote up in the papers, with pictures an' things, too, jest to please the people in the East. If I've got to die, I'd rather do it quiet and peaceful, among the boys I know. I ain't no free circus." "We did not come to write you up; it was for another purpose," Harley hastened to say. He was surprised at the youth of the prisoner, who obviously was not over twenty-one, a mere boy, with good features and a look half defiant, half appealing. "Well, what did you come for, then?" asked the boy.