dropped all thought of it. They stood with sad faces looking at
the barn. They seemed to be making no plans at all to reach a place of
more complete safety. They were halted and stupefied by some unknown
calamity.

"How do you raikon they cotch him, Sim?" one whispered mournfully.

"I don't know," replied another, in the same tone.

Another with a low snarl expressed in two words his opinion of the
methods of Fate: "Oh, hell!"

The three men started then as if simultaneously stung and gazed at the
young girl who stood silently near them. The man who had sworn began to
make agitated apology: "Pardon, miss! 'Pon my soul I clean forgot you
was by. 'Deed, and I wouldn't swear like that if I had knowed. 'Deed, I
wouldn't."

The girl did not seem to hear him. She was staring at the barn. Suddenly
she turned and whispered, "Who is he?"

"He's Cap'n Sawyer, m'm," they told her sorrowfully. "He's our own
cap'n. He's been in command of us yere since a long time. He's got folks
about yere. Raikon they cotch him while he was a-visiting."

She was still for a time and then, awed, she said, "Will they--will they
hang him?"

"No, m'm. Oh, no, m'm. Don't raikon no such thing. No, m'm."

The group became absorbed in a contemplation of the barn. For a time no
one moved nor spoke. At last the girl was aroused by slight sounds, and
turning, she perceived that the three men who had so recently escaped
from the barn were now advancing toward it.

V.

The girl, waiting in the darkness, expected to hear the sudden crash and
uproar of a fight as soon as the three creeping men should reach the
barn. She reflected in an agony upon the swift disaster that would
befall any enterprise so desperate. She had an impulse to beg them to
come away. The grass rustled in silken movements as she sped toward the
barn.

When she arrived, however, she gazed about her bewildered. The men were
gone. She searched with her eyes, trying to detect some moving thing,
but she could see nothing.

Left alone again, she began to be afraid of the night. The great
stretches of darkness could hide crawling dangers. From sheer desire to
see a human, she was obliged to peep again at the knothole. The sentry
had apparently wearied of talking. Instead, he was reflecting. The
prisoner still sat on the feed box, moodily staring at the floor. The
girl felt in one way that she was looking at a ghastly group in wax. She
started when the old horse put down an