head.
There, to her, was the dark god of the tragedy.

The prisoner in gray at this moment burst into a laugh that was no more
than a hysterical gurgle. "Well, you can't hold that gun out forever!
Pretty soon you'll have to lower it."

The sentry's voice sounded slightly muffled, for his cheek was pressed
against the weapon. "I won't be tired for some time yet."

The girl saw the head slowly rise, the eyes fixed upon the sentry's
face. A tall, black figure slunk across the cow stalls and vanished back
of old Santo's quarters. She knew what was to come to pass. She knew
this grim thing was upon a terrible mission, and that it would reappear
again at the head of the little passage between Santo's stall and the
wall, almost at the sentry's elbow; and yet when she saw a faint
indication as of a form crouching there, a scream from an utterly new
alarm almost escaped her.

The sentry's arms, after all, were not of granite. He moved restively.
At last he spoke in his even, unchanging tone: "Well, I guess you'll
have to climb into that feed box. Step back and lift the lid."

"Why, you don't mean----"

"Step back!"

The girl felt a cry of warning arising to her lips as she gazed at this
sentry. She noted every detail of his facial expression. She saw,
moreover, his mass of brown hair bunching disgracefully about his ears,
his clear eyes lit now with a hard, cold light, his forehead puckered in
a mighty scowl, the ring upon the third finger of the left hand. "Oh,
they won't kill him! Surely they won't kill him!" The noise of the fight
in the orchard was the loud music, the thunder and lightning, the
rioting of the tempest which people love during the critical scene of a
tragedy.

When the prisoner moved back in reluctant obedience, he faced for an
instant the entrance of the little passage, and what he saw there must
have been written swiftly, graphically in his eyes. And the sentry read
it and knew then that he was upon the threshold of his death. In a
fraction of time, certain information went from the grim thing in the
passage to the prisoner, and from the prisoner to the sentry. But at
that instant the black formidable figure arose, towered, and made its
leap. A new shadow flashed across the floor when the blow was struck.

As for the girl at the knothole, when she returned to sense she found
herself standing with clinched hands and screaming with her might.

As if her reason had again departed from her, she ran