carried
it out.

"Michael Dennin, in three days' time you are to be hanged by the neck
until you are dead."

Such was the sentence. The man breathed an unconscious sigh of relief,
then laughed defiantly, and said, "Thin I'm thinkin' the damn bunk won't
be achin' me back anny more, an' that's a consolation."

With the passing of the sentence a feeling of relief seemed to
communicate itself to all of them. Especially was it noticeable in
Dennin. All sullenness and defiance disappeared, and he talked sociably
with his captors, and even with flashes of his old-time wit. Also, he
found great satisfaction in Edith's reading to him from the Bible. She
read from the New Testament, and he took keen interest in the prodigal
son and the thief on the cross.

On the day preceding that set for the execution, when Edith asked her
usual question, "Why did you do it?" Dennin answered, "'Tis very simple.
I was thinkin'--"

But she hushed him abruptly, asked him to wait, and hurried to Hans's
bedside. It was his watch off, and he came out of his sleep, rubbing his
eyes and grumbling.

"Go," she told him, "and bring up Negook and one other Indian. Michael's
going to confess. Make them come. Take the rifle along and bring them
up at the point of it if you have to."

Half an hour later Negook and his uncle, Hadikwan, were ushered into the
death chamber. They came unwillingly, Hans with his rifle herding them
along.

"Negook," Edith said, "there is to be no trouble for you and your people.
Only is it for you to sit and do nothing but listen and understand."

Thus did Michael Dennin, under sentence of death, make public confession
of his crime. As he talked, Edith wrote his story down, while the
Indians listened, and Hans guarded the door for fear the witnesses might
bolt.

He had not been home to the old country for fifteen years, Dennin
explained, and it had always been his intention to return with plenty of
money and make his old mother comfortable for the rest of her days.

"An' how was I to be doin' it on sixteen hundred?" he demanded. "What I
was after wantin' was all the goold, the whole eight thousan'. Thin I
cud go back in style. What ud be aisier, thinks I to myself, than to
kill all iv yez, report it at Skaguay for an Indian-killin', an' thin
pull out for Ireland? An' so I started in to kill all iv yez, but, as
Harkey was fond of sayin', I cut out too large a chunk an' fell down on
the swallowin' iv it