However it might have gratified the gambler's vanity, it did not add to his popularity. On the contrary, it increased the spite felt for him, and caused the dark suspicions to be oftener repeated. Such were the circumstances preceding a terrible tragedy that one day startled Helena out of its ordinary tranquillity. The young girl in question was found in the woods, at no great distance from the town, in the condition already stated by Dick Tarleton, murdered, and Dick himself was charged with being the murderer. He was at once arrested and arraigned, not before a regular court of justice, but one constituted under a tree, and under the presidency of Judge Lynch. It was done in all haste, both the arrest and the trial, and equally quick was the condemnation. The case was so clear. His pistol, the very weapon that had sent the fatal bullet, in the hurry and confusion of escape, was let fall upon the ground close by the side of the victim. His relation with the unfortunate girl--some speech he had been heard boastingly to utter--a suspected disagreement arising from it--all pointed to Dick Tarleton as the assassin; and by a unanimous verdict of his excited judges, prompted by extreme vindictiveness, he was sentenced to hanging upon a tree. In five minutes more he would have been consigned to this improvised gallows, but for the negligence of his executioners. In their blind fury they had but slightly fastened his hands, while they had forgotten to strip him of his coat. In the pocket of this there chanced to be another pistol--the fellow of that found. Its owner remembered it, and, in the hour of his despair, determined upon an attempt to escape. Wresting his wrists free from their fastening, he drew the pistol, discharged it in the face of the man who stood most in his way, and then clearing a track, sprang off into the woods! The sudden surprise, the dismay caused by the death of the man shot at-- for he fell dead in his track--held the others for some time as if spell-bound. When the pursuit commenced Dick Tarleton was out of sight, and neither Judge Lynch nor his jury ever set eyes upon him again. The woods were scoured all round, and the roads travelled for days by parties sent in search of him. But all returned without reporting Dick Tarleton, or any traces of him. It was thought that some one must have assisted him in his escape, and suspicion was directed upon a hunter named Rook, who squatted near White River--the Jerry Rook of our tale. But no proof could be obtained of this, and the hunter was left unmolested, though with some additional stain on a character before not reputed very clean. Such is a brief sketch of the life of Richard Tarleton--that portion of it spent on the north-eastern corner of Arkansas. No wonder, with such a record, he felt constrained to do his travelling by night.