The mob was to participate in force of full numbers and no absentees were to be tolerated. "When ther game starts up hit's got ter go quick as a bat flyin' through hell," enjoined the director. "Every man teks his slicker an' his false-face, an' goes one by one ter ther woods eround Thornton's house es soon es dusk sottles. Every man's got ter be nigh enough afore sun-down ter make shore of gettin' thar on time. Then they all draws in, holdin' ter ther thickets. Ther signal will be ther callin' of whippoorwills--a double call with a count of five betwixt 'em. When we're all drawed up eround ther house, so no way hain't left open thet a rabbit could break through, I'll sing out--an' when I does thet ye all closes in on ther run. Thar's a big walnuck tree right by ther door ter hang him on--an' termorrer mornin' folks'll hev a lesson thet they kin kinderly take ter heart." * * * * * On his way back from Hump Doane's house that morning Parish Thornton made a detour for a brief visit upon Jase Burrell, the man to whose discretion he had entrusted the keeping of Bas Rowlett's sealed confession. From the hands of that faithful custodian he took the envelope and thrust it into his breast pocket. Now that his own pledge of suspended vengeance had been exonerated he would no longer need that bond of amnesty. Moreover, he knew now that this compact had been a rope of sand to Bas Rowlett from the beginning, and would never be anything else. It only served to divert the plotter's activities and treacheries into subtler channels--and when the sun set to-day there would be either no Bas Rowlett to bind or no Parish Thornton to seek to bind him. Then he rode home. Thornton entered his own house silently, but with the face of an avenging spirit, and it was a face that told his story. The rigid pose and the set jaw, the irreconcilable light in the eyes, were all things that Dorothy understood at once and without explanation. As she looked at her husband she thought, somehow, of a falcon or eagle poised on a bare tree-top at a precipice edge. There was the same alert restiveness as might have marked a bird of prey, gauging the blue sky-reaches with predatory eye, and ready to strike with a winged bolt of death. Quietly, because the baby had just fallen asleep, she rose and laid the child on the bright patterned coverlet of the fourposter, and she paused, too, to brace herself with a glance into the cool shadows and golden lights of the ample branches beyond the window. Then she came back to the door and her voice was steady but low as she said, "Ye've done found out who did hit. I kin read thet in yore eyes, Ken." He nodded, but until he had crossed the room and laid a hand on each of her shoulders, he did not speak.