]

"You're right--that's so. But I'm telling you
truth now--those two men had both been in the Meadows that day and it
killed them. One went crazy and ran off into the desert. They found his
bones. The other shot himself a few years ago. Those of us that live are
already in hell--"

He sat up, now, animated for the moment.

"--in hell right here, I tell you. I'd have welcomed you, or any other
man that would kill me, any time this fifteen years. I'd have gone out
to meet you. Do you think I like to hear the women scream? Do you think
I'm not crazed myself by this thing--right back of me here,
_now_--crawling, bleeding, breathing on me--trying to come here in front
where I must _see_ it? Don't you see God has known how to punish me
worse than you could, just by keeping me alive and sane? Oh, man! you
don't know how I've longed for that bullet of yours, right here through
the temples where the cries sound worst. I didn't dare to do it
myself--I was afraid I'd make my punishment worse if I tried to shirk;
but I used to hope you would come as you said you would. I wonder I
didn't know you at once."

He put his hands to his head and fell back again on the pillow, with a
little moan.

"Well, it ain't strange I didn't know _you_. I was looking for a big
man. You seemed as big as a house to me that day. I forgot that I'd
grown up and you might be small. When those fellows got tight up there
and let on like it was you that some folks hinted had took a child and
kept it out of that muss, I couldn't hardly believe it; and everybody
seeming to regard you so highly. And I couldn't believe this big girl
was little Prue Girnway that I remembered. It seemed like you two would
have to be a great big man and a little bit of a baby girl with yellow
hair; and now I find you're--say, Mister, _honestly_, you're such a
poor, broke-down, little coot it seems a'most like a shame to put a
bullet through you, in spite of all your doings!"

The little man sat up again, with new animation in his eyes,--the same
eager boyishness that he had somehow kept through all his years.

"_Don't_!" he exclaimed, earnestly. "Let me beg you, don't kill me! For
your own sake--not for mine. I'm a poor, meatless husk. I'll die soon at
best, and I'm already in a hell you can't make any hotter. Let me do you
this service; let me persuade you not to kill me. Have you ever killed a
man?"

"No, not yet; I've allowed to a couple of times, but it's never come
j