tle heavier?"

"The court sees no reason for altering its decision," his honor replied,
gravely, passing on to the delivery of the next sentence.

But after the court had adjourned, the judge stepped up to the prisoner
and said, kindly, "I wouldn't take it too hard, if I were you, Rankin.
We all know that there was no murder in your heart."

"Yes, there was, your honor. Yes, there was."

"At any rate, the man's death was clearly not your deed. It was the hand
of the Lord that did it."

"I don't know, your honor," Rankin persisted. "It feels to me as though
it was me that done it."

The judge and the lookers-on were puzzled by this persistency. It did
not seem in character. For the first time in his life, Rankin felt the
need of words. The moral perplexity was too great for him to deal with;
he was reaching out for something to take hold of, a thing which his
self-contained, crudely disciplined nature had never craved before.

"It's an awful thing to send a soul to hell," he muttered.

Then, in his extremity, he felt a soft touch upon his arm. Myra Beckwith
stood beside him.

"Ed," she said, with the sweet seriousness which had first attracted
him, and now at last there was the tone in her voice which he would have
given his life to hear,--"Ed, think of the seven souls you have
delivered out of hell! I was over to see them yesterday."

The consolation of that voice and touch calmed his troubled spirit,
restored him to himself; the nightmare of the last two days faded and
slid away. He stood a moment in awkward silence, while Myra's hand
rested upon his arm; then, before them all, he laid his hand upon it,
and, with the solemnity of a priest before the altar, he said, "I guess
it was the Lord that done it, after all!"

VI

THE LAME GULCH PROFESSOR.

Simon Amberley had never been able to strike root in life, until, some
ten years since, he found a congenial soil in that remote fastness of
the Rocky Mountains known as Lame Gulch. From the first moment of his
arrival there it was borne in upon him that this was the goal of his
long, apparently aimless pilgrimage, and he lost no time in securing to
himself a foothold, by the simple and inexpensive method of taking up a
ranch.

The land he chose was higher up the Gulch than any of the neighboring
ranches, and all that it was rich in was views. It ran up the side of a
hill, seen from the top of which, the whole Rocky Mountain Range had the
appearance o