Mellen was called in, however, and at once recognized Morton as the ungodly young man who had insulted him and disturbed the worship of God. He exhorted him to repent, and to tell who was the owner of the horse, and to seek a Saviour who was ready to forgive even the dying thief upon the cross. In vain Morton protested his innocence. Mellen told him that he could not escape, though he advised the crowd to hand him over to the sheriff. But Mellen's additional testimony to Morton's bad character had destroyed his last chance of being given up to the courts. As soon as Mr. Mellen went away, the arrangements for hanging him at nightfall began to take definite shape, and a rope was hung over a limb, in full sight of the condemned man. Mr. Mellen used with telling effect, at every one of the fifty-eight places upon his next round, the story of the sad end of this hardened young man, who had begun as a scoffer and ended as an impenitent thief. Morton sat in a sort of stupor, watching the sun descending toward the horizon. He heard the rude voices of the mob about him. But he thought of Patty and his mother. While the mob was thus waiting for night, and Morton waiting for death, there passed upon the road an elderly man. He was just going out of sight, when Morton roused himself enough to observe him. When he had disappeared, Goodwin was haunted with the notion that it must be Mr. Donaldson, the old Presbyterian preacher, whose sermons he had so often heard at the Scotch Settlement. Could it be that thoughts of home and mother had suggested Donaldson? At least, the faintest hope was worth clutching at in a time of despair. "Call him back!" cried Morton. "Won't somebody call that old man back? He knows me." [Illustration: A LAST HOPE.] Nobody was disposed to serve the culprit. The leaders looked knowingly the one at the other, and shrugged their shoulders. "If you don't call him back you will be a set of murderers!" cried the despairing Goodwin. _CHAPTER XVII._ DELIVERANCE.