anguished breath, and life-blood ebbing from her, and eyeballs glazing,
she spoke the truth. With dark night coming on, and the death-rattle
in her throat, she raised herself weakly and pointed a shaking finger
at the accused, thus, and she said, 'Him, him, him. St. Vincha, him do
it.'"

With Bill Brown's finger still boring into him, St. Vincent struggled
to his feet. His face looked old and gray, and he looked about him
speechlessly. "Funk! Funk!" was whispered back and forth, and not so
softly but what he heard. He moistened his lips repeatedly, and his
tongue fought for articulation. "It is as I have said," he succeeded,
finally. "I did not do it. Before God, I did not do it!" He stared
fixedly at John the Swede, waiting the while on his laggard thought.
"I . . . I did not do it . . . I did not . . . I . . . I did not."

He seemed to have become lost in some supreme meditation wherein John
the Swede figured largely, and as Frona caught him by the hand and
pulled him gently down, some man cried out, "Secret ballot!"

But Bill Brown was on his feet at once. "No! I say no! An open
ballot! We are men, and as men are not afraid to put ourselves on
record."

A chorus of approval greeted him, and the open ballot began. Man after
man, called upon by name, spoke the one word, "Guilty."

Baron Courbertin came forward and whispered to Frona. She nodded her
head and smiled, and he edged his way back, taking up a position by the
door. He voted "Not guilty" when his turn came, as did Frona and Jacob
Welse. Pierre La Flitche wavered a moment, looking keenly at Frona and
St. Vincent, then spoke up, clear and flute-like, "Guilty."

As the chairman arose, Jacob Welse casually walked over to the opposite
side of the table and stood with his back to the stove. Courbertin,
who had missed nothing, pulled a pickle-keg out from the wall and
stepped upon it.

The chairman cleared his throat and rapped for order. "Gentlemen," he
announced, "the prisoner--"

"Hands up!" Jacob Welse commanded peremptorily, and a fraction of a
second after him came the shrill "Hands up, gentlemen!" of Courbertin.

Front and rear they commanded the crowd with their revolvers. Every
hand was in the air, the chairman's having gone up still grasping the
mallet. There was no disturbance. Each stood or sat in the same
posture as when the command went forth. Their eyes, playing here and
there among the central figures, always ret