“What will be done with his father if he is captured? Will they--” She could not bring herself to finish the sentence. “Goodness knows! I wouldn't worry about him,” said Mrs. Emory, in a tone of considerable asperity. “He's made all the trouble, and I haven't a particle of patience with him!” CHAPTER XX BY three o'clock the saloons and stores, which had closed at noon, opened their doors, and Antioch emerged from the shadow of its funeral gloom. By four o'clock a long procession of carriages and wagons was rumbling out of town. Those who had come from a distance were going home, but many lingered in the hope that the excitement was not all past. An hour later a rumor reached Antioch that Roger Oakley had been captured. It spread about the streets like wildfire and penetrated to the stores and saloons. At first it was not believed. Just who was responsible for the rumor no one knew, and no one cared, but soon the additional facts were being vouched for by a score of excited men that a search-party from Barrow's Saw Mills, which had been trailing the fugitive for two days, had effected his capture after a desperate fight in the northern woods, and were bringing him to Antioch for identification. It was generally understood that if the prisoner proved to be Roger Oakley he would be spared the uncertainty of a trial. The threat was made openly that he would be strung up to the first convenient lamp-post. As Mr. Britt remarked to a customer from Harrison, for whom he was mixing a cocktail: “It'd be a pity to keep a man of his years waiting; and what's the use of spending thousands of dollars for a conviction, anyhow, when everybody knows he done it?” At this juncture Jim Brown, the sheriff, and Joe Weaver, the town marshal, were seen to cross the square with an air of importance and preoccupation. It was noted casually that the right-hand coat-pocket of each sagged suggestively. They disappeared into McElroy's livery-stable. Fifty men and boys rushed precipitately in pursuit, and were just in time to see the two officers pass out at the back of the stable and jump into a light road-cart that stood in the alley. A moment later and they were whirling off up-town. All previous doubt vanished instantly. It was agreed on all sides that they were probably acting on private information, and had gone to bring in the prisoner. So strong was this conviction that a number of young men, whose teams were hitched about the square, promptly followed, and soon an anxious cavalcade emptied itself into the dusty country road. Just beyond the corporation line the North Street, as it was called, forked. Mr. Brown and his companion had taken the road which bore to the west and led straight to Barrow's Saw Mills. Those who were first to reach the forks could still see the road-cart a black dot in the distance.