"Wait a minute," said Moll abruptly. "Somehow I ain't as skeert as I wuz. You're shore they won't hang me? 'Ca'se I'd hate to be hung,--I'd hate to die that-away, Mister." "They won't hang you, Moll,--take my word for it." "Well, then," said she, bringing forward the hand she had been holding behind her back all the time; "here's the knife I done it with. It's his'n. He was braggin' last night about how many gullets he had slit with it,--I mean men's gullets. I wuz jest sort o' hangin' onto it in case I--but I don't believe I ever could a' done it. 'Tain't 'ca'se I'm afeared to die but they say a person that takes his own life is shore to go to hell--'ca'se he don't git no chance fer to repent. Take it, Mister." She handed the big sheath-knife to the sheriff. Then she followed Rachel Carter out of the hut, apparently unconscious of the curious eyes that followed her. She passed close by the corpse. She looked down at the ghastly face and twisted body without the slightest trace of emotion,--neither dread nor repugnance nor interest beyond a curious narrowing of the eyes as of one searching for some sign of trickery on the part of a wily adversary. On the way out she stopped to pick up a wretched, almost toothless comb and some dishrags. "I guess we better go down to the river," she said as they stepped out into the open. "'Tain't very fer, Mrs. Gwyn,--an' the water's cleaner. Hain't no danger of me tryin' to git away," she went on, with a feeble grin as her eyes swept the little clearing, revealing armed men in all directions. Her gaze rested for a moment on Martin Hawk, who was staring at her from his seat on a stump hard by. "There's my pap over yonder," she said, with a scowl. "He's the one that ort to be strung up fer all this. He didn't do it,--but he's to blame, just the same. They ain't got him 'rested fer doin' it, have they? 'Ca'se he didn't. He'll tell you he's as innocent as a unborn child,--he allus does,--an' he is as fer as the killin' goes. But ef he'd done what wuz right hit never would 'a' happened. Thet's whut I got ag'inst him." Rachel Carter was looking at the strange creature with an interest not far removed from pity. Despite the sullen, hang-dog expression she was a rather handsome girl; wild, untutored, almost untamed she was, and yet not without a certain diffidence that bespoke better qualities than appeared on the surface. She was tall and strongly built, with the long, swinging stride of the unhampered woods-woman. Her young shoulders and back were bent with the toil and drudgery of the life she led. Her eyes, in which lurked a never-absent gleam of pain, were dark, smouldering, deep set and so restless that one could not think of them as ever being closed in sleep. The girl led the way down a narrow path to a little sand-bar.