keerful," he added with a slight laugh.

He came up to the saddle-skirt and held out his hand, half
hesitatingly, as he spoke.

The Bishop--as every one knew him--glanced into the face before him
and saw something which touched him quickly. It was grief-stricken,
and sorrow sat in the fierce eyes, and in the shadows of the dark
face. And through it all, a pleading, beseeching appeal for sympathy
ran as he half doubtingly held out his hand.

"Why,--yes--, I'll take it, Jack, robber that you are," said the old
man cheerily. "You may not be as bad as they say, an' no man is worse
than his heart. But what in the worl' do you want to hold up as po' a
man as me--an' if I do say it, yo' frien' when you was a boy?"

"I know," said the other--"I know. I don't want yo' money, even if
you had it. I want you. You've come as a God-send. I--I couldn't bury
him till you'd said somethin'."

His voice choked--he shook with a suppressed sob.

The bishop slid off his horse: "What is it, Jack? You hain't kilt
anybody, have you?"

"No--no"--said the other--"it's little--little Jack--he's dead."

The Bishop looked at him inquiringly. He had never before heard of
little Jack.

"I--I dunno', Jack," he said. "You'll have to tell me all. I hain't
seed you sence you started in your robber career after the war--sence
I buried yo' father," he added. "An' a fine, brave man he was,
Jack--a fine, brave man--an' I've wondered how sech a man's son
could ever do as you've done."

"Come," said the other--"I'll tell you. Come, an' say a prayer over
little Jack fust. You must do it"--he said almost fiercely--"I won't
bury him without a prayer--him that was an angel an' all I had on
earth. Hitch yo' hoss just outer the road, in the thicket, an' follow
me."

The Bishop did as he was told, and Jack Bracken led the way down a
rocky gulch under the shaggy sides of Sand Mountain, furzed with
scraggy trees and thick with underbrush and weeds.

It was a tortuous path and one in which the old man himself, knowing,
as he thought he did, every foot of the country around, could easily
have been lost. Above, through the trees, the moon shone dimly, and
no path could be seen under foot. But Jack Bracken slouched heavily
along, in a wabbling, awkward gait, never once looking back to see if
his companion followed.

For a half mile they went through what the Bishop had always thought
was an almost impenetrable cattle trail. At last they wound around a
cur