there'll be a reprieve anyhow. It's pretty near _the day_, and this isn't
a bad world to kick in, so long as you kick with one leg on the ground,
and--"

The Governor hastily intervened upon the Sheriff's brutal remarks. "There
is no time to be lost, Grassette. He has been ten days in the mine."

Grassette's was not a slow brain. For a man of such physical and bodily
bulk, he had more talents than are generally given. If his brain had been
slower, his hand also would have been slower to strike. But his
intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since the
day he had been deserted it had ceased to control his actions--a
passionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after the
first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was before
Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it had then,
and come forward again to this supreme moment, with all that life's harsh
experiences had done for it, with the education that misery and misdoing
give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years, and the
crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced had lifted him
into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A moment ago his
eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and passion; now they
grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet, with a strange,
penetrating force and inquiry in them.

"Bignold--where does he come from?--What is he?" he asked the Sheriff.

"He is an Englishman; he's only been out here a few months. He's been
shooting and prospecting; but he's a better shooter than a prospector.
He's a stranger; that's why all the folks out here want to save him if
it's possible. It's pretty hard dying in a strange land far away from all
that's yours. Maybe he's got a wife waiting for him over there."

"_Nom de Dieu_!" said Grassette, with suppressed malice, under his
breath.

"Maybe there's a wife waiting for him, and there's her to think of. The
West's hospitable, and this thing has taken hold of it; the West wants to
save this stranger, and it's waiting for you, Grassette, to do its work
for it, you being the only man that can do it, the only one that knows the
other secret way into Keeley's Gulch. Speak right out, Grassette. It's
your chance for life. Speak out quick."

The last three words were uttered in the old slave-driving tone, though
the earlier part of the speech had been delivered oracularly, and had
b