“I wonder, sir, that you have not gone to the authorities and requested an execution. It would be a fitting sequel to your atrocious errors.” The face of the counsellor was ugly with a sneer. “Your seeking counsel at once stands out as your one intelligent act. It is marvellous discretion, Judged by your narrative; marvellous and unexpected. Let us hope that your period of mental aberration is past.” Then he arose and stood looking down at the man who, like many another, had striven to throw the machinery of human justice out of its proper gear, and had simply succeeded in tangling himself in its complicated wheels. “In order to save you now,” said Randolph Mason, “we must move quickly. These great insurance companies have the ablest detective service of the world. With such a bungle as you have made, it is merely a question of a few weeks until they will succeed in fastening this murder upon you, not directly perhaps, but sufficiently to warrant your arrest, and then you must take your hazards with a jury. The man who to-day hopes to cover his crime well enough to baffle the keen and tireless search of a great life insurance company must be governed by something vastly nearer to an intelligence than that upon which you and the decedent Hirst depended. “At this stage of your blunder there are but two ways by which it is possible to put you absolutely beyond the reach of the law. Death is one way, and we will pass that. The other I am now going to bring to your aid. With it the greatest care and haste are vital. At nine to-night you must be here prepared to put yourself wholly in my hands. I shall have every arrangement complete by that time.” Mason stopped short, and put his hand down heavily upon the table. “Now, sir,” he said, bluntly, “it will be entirely useless for me to attempt the drastic measures necessary in your case unless you are prepared to act under my fingers like a machine. Can you do that?” “Yes,” said the man, wiping the perspiration from his face. “Then,” said Randolph Mason, opening the door of his private office, “go down to your hotel and sleep; and if you please, sir, do not think, or, to be more accurate, do not attempt to think. Your thoughts, as has been demonstrated, are of no value to you, and I assure you, sir, they will be quite useless to me.” Then he closed the door after the departing criminal and went back to his desk. III THE sheriff was riding slowly down the narrow mountain road to the ford over Tug River,--“Jim's Ford” the natives of McDowell had dubbed this crossing far back when the dry ginseng root was a legal tender for all debts public and private southwest, as the crow flies, from the county of Mercer. Whence the name had come, and by reason of what, tradition was silent. No doubt the original Jim had dwelt in this rugged gorge, and by accidental hap had given his name to this rocky ford that lived on and proclaimed him long after the man had passed out into the hands of the Wind.