eapons, and a suggestion to
"throw him from the window," was only overridden by a gesture from the
Judge. Tennessee laughed. And apparently oblivious of the excitement,
Tennessee's Partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again with
his handkerchief.

When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the use
of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense could not be
condoned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue, and
those who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled
slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the
gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated
sense of justice which swayed the tribunal, and was perplexed with the
belief that he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and
saying, "This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner,"
he bowed to the jury and was about to withdraw, when the Judge called
him back. "If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say
it now." For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and
his strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and
saying, "Euchred, old man!" held out his hand. Tennessee's Partner took
it in his own, and saying, "I just dropped in as I was passin' to see
how things was gettin' on," let the hand passively fall, and adding that
"it was a warm night," I again mopped his face with his handkerchief,
and without another word withdrew.

The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled
insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch--who, whether bigoted, weak,
or narrow, was at least incorruptible--firmly fixed in the mind of that
mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate; and
at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the
top of Marley's Hill.

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how
perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported,
with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future
evil-doers, in the Red Dog Clarion, by its editor, who was present, and
to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty
of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and sky,
the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal and
promise of Nature, and, above all, the infinite serenity that thrilled
through each, was n