She shook her head. "Not exactly," she replied. "Did you not hear me say that Simon Braley would never be taken alive?" With that, she turned and walked away, leaving him to stare after her until she entered the kitchen door. He was conscious of a sense of horror that began to send a chill through his veins. CHAPTER XV THE LANDING OF THE "PAUL REVERE" The Paul Revere tied up at the landing shortly after two o'clock. The usual crowd of onlookers thronged the bank, attention being temporarily diverted from an important game of "horseshoes" that was taking place in the sugar grove below Trentman's shanty. Pitching horseshoes was the daily fair-weather pastime of the male population of the town. At one time or another during the course of the day, practically every man in the place came down to the grove to shy horseshoes at the stationary but amazingly elusive pegs. It was not an uncommon thing for a merchant to close his place of business for an hour or so in order to keep an engagement to pitch horseshoes with some time-honoured adversary. On this occasion a very notable match was in progress between "Judge" Billings and Mr. Pennington Sawyer, the real estate agent. They were the recognized champions. Both were accredited with the astonishing feat of ringing eight out of ten casts at twenty paces; if either was more than six inches away from the stake on any try the crowd mutely attributed the miss to inhibitions of the night before. Not only was the betting lively when these two experts met but all other matches were abandoned during the classic clash. The "Judge" did not owe his title to service on the bench nor even at the bar of justice. It had been bestowed upon him by a liberal-minded community because of his proficiency as a judge of horse races, foot races, shooting matches, dog or rooster fights, and other activities of a similar character. He was, above all things, a good judge of whiskey. When not engaged in judging one thing or another, he managed to eke out a comfortable though sometimes perilous living by trading horses,--a profession which made him an almost infallible judge of men, notwithstanding two or three instances where he had erred with painful results to his person. Notably, the prodigious thrashing Jake Miller had given him two days after a certain trade, and an almost identical experience with Bud Shanks who had given a perfectly sound mare and seventeen dollars to boot for a racehorse that almost blew up with the heaves before Bud was half-way home.