a
desperate fear, but there was a note of determination in it.

"I'll tell 'em--I'll tell 'em. Come on, I ken walk. But it's only for
Jim, an'--an' I don't want that gold." And for the first time in her
life Eve saw the boy's eyes flood with tears, which promptly streamed
down his ghastly cheeks.

Peter's eyes glowed. There was just time, he believed. But he was
thinking of the boy. At last--at last. It was for Jim Elia was doing
it. For Jim, and not for the gold. He had delved and delved until at
last he had struck the real color, where the soil had long been given
up as barren.

"Come, laddie." He stepped up to the boy with a great kindness, and,
stretching out his herculean arms, he lifted him bodily from the bed.
"You can't walk, you're too ill. I'll jest carry you."

And he bore him out of the house.

CHAPTER XXXV

IN THE SHADOW OF THE GALLOWS TREE

The creak of a saddle; the shuffling and rustle of horses moving at a
walk through the long prairie grass; the sudden jolt of a wheel as it
dropped from a tufty wad to the barren sand intersecting the clumps of
grass of which the prairie is largely made up; the half-hearted neigh
of a horse, as though it were striving to break from under the spell
of gloomy depression which seemed to weigh heavily upon the very
atmosphere; these were the only sounds which broke the gray stillness
of dawn.

No one seemed to have words to offer. No one seemed to have sufficient
lightness even to smoke a morning pipe. There were few amongst those
riding out from Barnriff who would not far sooner have remained in
their beds, amidst the easy dreams of healthy, tired nature, now that
the last moments of a man's life were at hand. There were few, now
that the heat and excitement of accusation were past, but would far
rather have had the easy thought that they had been on the other side
of the ballot. But this was mere human sentimentality at the thought
of the passing of one man's life. This thing was necessary, necessary
for example and precept. A man had slain another. He was guilty; he
must die. The argument was as old as the world.

Yet life is very precious. It is so precious that these men could not
rid themselves of the haunting ghost of self-consciousness. They
placed themselves in the position of the condemned, and at once
depression wrapped them in its pall, and, shrinking within themselves,
all buoyancy left them. A man had to die, and each man felt he was
instr