ng and comes here? If I can probably get
off, and you'll probably be hanged--what's the answer?"

"You don't mean--" Dale swung about, resurrected hope lighting his face;
but Brent held up a warning hand.

"You're on, and that's enough; so don't open your mouth even in here. If
you do, I'll back out. You get that, too, don't you? Now listen: if Jess
comes, just tell him you don't know anything about anything; that you've
never left the library. I'll fix the Colonel and Zack."

But Dale was scarcely listening. He had begun to cavort about the room
in a semi-barbarous dance, clapping his hands and making a purring sort
of growl in his throat. A chair fell over; then another.

"Chop that crazy stuff," Brent commanded. "Want to wake the house?"

The big mountaineer looked rather sheepish as he picked up one of the
chairs and sat down in it.

"I reckon I was so tickled to get off from the law," he mildly
explained.

"I thought you might be mourning over the fate of whoever takes your
place," the engineer murmured, with a sarcasm entirely lost on his
listener. "Hell, Dale," he now let his feeling explode. "I've seen lots
of fellows from the mountains, but any one of 'em would lose a hand
before letting another man take his medicine! You've got to let me do
it, you understand!--but I do reserve this opportunity of saying you're
damned unappreciative."

"Do you reckon I'm lettin' you do it for me?" he turned savagely. "Do
you think it's me--jest me? Then you're a-_way_ off!"

"Well, I supposed it had some little to do with you," Brent suggested,
"and--and Miss Jane."

"It hain't!" He was in a fury again, and dropped back into the old
dialect "I hain't thinkin' of Miss Jane, nor nuthin'--'cept jest the
place Ruth said I'd git ter fill, the man I'll make 'mongst the big men
of the world! I'm the only one on airth as kin be as big as that, hain't
I? Yeou hain't amountin' ter nuthin', air ye? Why shouldn't ye take my
place afore the law? Hain't hit Natur's way fer the puny ter go down
afore the strong?"

The engineer's eyes opened at the curious sensation this gave him; at
the utter astonishment of listening. Then he softly began to laugh.

"My friend," he said, "I have raised my hat to one or two colossal
freaks in the past, but henceforth I shall come into your exalted
presence with bare-headed humilitude. However, my boy, don't think that
I'm flirting with the penitentiary for the sake of your dazzling future,
or