ooked at Hues in dull wonder.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Waiting to arrest you--ain't that plain?" said Hues, with a grim smile.

The outlaw's hands dropped at his side, limp and helpless. With some
idea that he might attempt to draw a weapon one of the men took hold of
him, but Murrell was nerveless to his touch; his face had gone a ghastly
white and was streaked with the markings of terror.

"Well, by thunder!" cried the man in utter amazement.

Murrell looked into Hues' face.

"You--you--" and the words thickened on his tongue becoming an
inarticulate murmur.

"It's all up, John," said Hues.

"No!" said Murrell, recovering himself. "You may as well turn me
loose--you can't arrest me!"

"I've done it," answered Hues, with a laugh. "I've been on your track
for six months."

"How about this fellow?" asked the man, whose pistol still covered Ware.
Hues glanced toward the planter and shook his head.

"Where are you going to take me?" asked Murrell quickly. Again Hues
laughed.

"You'll find that out in plenty of time, and then your friends can pass
the word around if they like; now you'll come with me!"

Ware neither moved nor spoke as Hues and his prisoner passed back along
the path, Hues with his hand on Murrell's shoulder, and one of his
companions close at his heels, while the third man led off the outlaw's
horse.

Presently the distant clatter of hoofs was borne to Ware's ears--only
that; the miracle of courage and daring he had half expected had not
happened. Murrell, for all his wild boasting, was like other men, like
himself. His bloodshot eyes slid around in their sockets. There across
the sunlit stretch of water was Betty--the thought of her brought him
to quick choking terrors. The whole fabric of crime by which he had been
benefited in the past or had expected to profit in the future seemed
toppling in upon him, but his mind clutched one important fact. Hues, if
he knew of Betty's disappearance, did not connect Murrell with it. Ware
sucked in comfort between his twitching lips. Stealing niggers! No one
would believe that he, a planter, had a hand in that, and for a brief
instant he considered signaling Bess to return. Slosson must be told
of Murrell's arrest; but he was sick with apprehension, some trap might
have been prepared for him, he could not know; and the impulse to act
forsook him.

He smote his hands together in a hopeless, beaten gesture. And Murrell
had gone weak--wi