conscious of the reason.

He breathed heavily, like a man saturating his lungs with pure air
after long confinement in a foul atmosphere. Then it almost seemed as
if his great frame shrank in stature, and became suddenly a wreck of
itself. As if age and decay had suddenly come upon him. As if the
weight of his body had become too heavy for him, and set his great
limbs tottering under it as he walked.

The excitement, the straining of thought and nerve had passed, leaving
him hopelessly oppressed, twenty years older.

The din and clamor of the final scenes in the saloon were still
ringing in his ears. It was all over. The farce of Jim Thorpe's trial
had been played out. But the shouts of men, hungering for the life of
a fellow man, still haunted him. The voice of the accuser was still
shrieking through his brain. The memory of the stern condemnation of
Doc Crombie left his great heart crushed and helpless.

His brain was still whirling with all the strain he had gone through,
his pulses were still hammering with the consuming anger which had
raged in him as he stood beside his friend defending him to the last.
And it had all proved useless. Jim Thorpe had been condemned by the
ballot of his fellow citizens. Death--a hideous, disgraceful death was
to be his, at the moment when the gray dawn should first lift the
eastern corner of the pall of night.

The saloon was behind Peter now. Its lights were still burning. For
the condemned man was to remain there with his guards until the
appointed time.

Peter remembered Jim's look when he finally bade him leave him. Could
he ever forget it? He had seen death in many forms in his time. He had
seen many men face it, each in his own way. But never in his life had
he seen such calmness, such apparent indifference as Jim Thorpe had
displayed.

When the ballot was taken and the doctor pronounced sentence, there
was never a tremor of an eyelid. There was not even one quick-drawn
breath. Nor was there a suggestion of any emotion--save that of
indifference.

Then when the doctor had named the manner of his death--a rawhide rope
on the bough of a tree--Jim had turned with a smile to Peter.

"I'd prefer to be shot," he said quietly. "But there, I s'pose this
thing must proceed by custom."

So Jim received the pronouncement of the final penalty for a crime of
which Peter was convinced he was innocent.

It had suddenly set his loyal heart longing with a mad, passionate
longing