It was a new pain that brought Morgan to his senses, the pain of returning life to his half-dead arms. Somebody was standing beside him holding these members raised to let the blood drain out of them, chafing them, and there was a smell of camphor and strong spirits in the place. "The rope wouldn't 'a' slipped _down_, if they was tryin' to hang him, anyhow," somebody said with conclusive finality. "Looks like they lassoed him and drug him," another said, full of the awe that hushes the human voice when one stands beside the dead. "Whoever done it ought to be skinned alive!" a woman declared, and Morgan thanked her in his heart for her sympathy, although there was a weight of such absolute weakness on his eyes that he could not open them to see her face. There was a dim sound of something being stirred in a glass, and the nerve-waking scent of more ardent spirits. "If this don't fetch him to," said the voice of the first speaker, the deep pectoral tone of a seasoned man, "you jump your horse and go for the doctor, Fred." Morgan shook his head to throw that obstinate weight from his eyes, or thought he shook it, but it was only the shadow of a movement. Slight as it was it brought an exclamation of relief in another voice, a woman's voice, also, tuned in the music of youth. "Oh! he moved!" she said. And she was the one who stood beside him, holding aloft and chafing his blood-gorged arm. "Blamed if he didn't! Here--try a little of this, son." Morgan was gathering headway out of the fog so rapidly now that he began to feel ashamed of this helpless situation in which so many kind hands were ministering to him as if he were a sick horse. He made a more determined effort to open his eyes, succeeding this time, although it seemed to call for as much strength to lift his lids as to shoulder a sack of wheat. He saw a large hand holding a spoon hovering near his mouth, and the outline of big shoulders in a red shirt. Morgan swallowed what was offered him, to feel it go tingling through his nerves with vivifying warmth, like a message of cheer over a telegraph wire. The large man who administered the dose was delighted. He spoke encouragingly, working the spoon faster, as a man blows eagerly when he sees a flame start weakly in a doubtful fire. The woman with the voice of youth, who stood on Morgan's left hand, gently put his arm down, as if modesty would no longer countenance this office of tenderness to a conscious man. "Any feelin' in your hands?" the man inquired, bending a whiskered face down near Morgan's. "Plenty of it, thank you," Morgan replied, his voice stubborn as a rusty hinge. "You'll be all right then, there's no bones broken as far as I can locate 'em. You just stretch out and take it easy, you'll be all right." "I gave up--I gave up--too easy," Morgan said, slowly, like a very tired man.