ith his fingers clutched in the soil, lay
there for some moments, silent and still. In this attitude, albeit a
skeptic and unorthodox man, he prayed. I cannot say--indeed I DARE not
say--that his prayer was heard, or that God visited him thus. Let us
rather hope that all there was of God in him, in this crucial moment of
agony and shame, strove outward and upward. Howbeit, when the moon
rose he rose too, perhaps a trifle less steady than the planet, and
began to descend the hill with feverish haste, yet with this marked
difference between his present haste and his former recklessness, that
it seemed to have a well-defined purpose. When he reached the road
again, he struck into a well-worn trail, where, in the distance, a
light faintly twinkled. Following this beacon, he kept on, and at last
flung himself heavily against the door of the little cabin from whose
window the light had shone. As he did so, it opened upon the figure of
a square, thickset man, who, in the impetuosity of Catron's onset,
received him, literally, in his arms.

"Captain Dick," said Roger Catron, hoarsely, "Captain Dick, save me!
For God's sake, save me!"

Captain Dick, without a word, placed a large, protecting hand upon
Catron's shoulder, allowed it to slip to his waist, and then drew his
visitor quietly, but firmly, within the cabin. Yet, in the very
movement, he had managed to gently and unobtrusively possess himself of
Catron's pistol.

"Save ye! From which?" asked Captain Dick, as quietly and
unobtrusively dropping the Derringer in a flour sack.

"From everything," gasped Catron, "from the men that are hounding me,
from my family, from my friends, but most of all--from, from--myself!"

He had, in turn, grasped Captain Dick, and forced him frenziedly
against the wall. The captain released himself, and, taking the hands
of his excited visitor, said slowly,--

"Ye wan some blue mass--suthin' to unload your liver. I'll get it up
for ye."

"But, Captain Dick, I'm an outcast, shamed, disgraced--"

"Two on them pills taken now, and two in the morning," continued the
captain, gravely, rolling a bolus in his fingers, "will bring yer head
to the wind again. Yer fallin' to leeward all the time, and ye want to
brace up."

"But, Captain," continued the agonized man, again clutching the sinewy
arms of his host, and forcing his livid face and fixed eyes within a
few inches of Captain Dick's, "hear me! You must and shall hear me.
I've