t the capture.

In town, the Old man had been quite as eager to come close to Florence
Grace Hallman--but he was not so lucky. Florence Grace had heard the
news of the fire a good half hour before the train left for Great Falls.

She would have preferred a train going the other way, but she decided
not to wait. She watched the sick woman put aboard the one Pullman
coach, and then she herself went into the stuffy day-coach. Florence
Grace Hallman was not in the habit of riding in day-coaches in the
night-time when there was a Pullman sleeper attached to the train. She
did not stop at Great Falls; she went on to Butte--and from there I do
not know where she went. Certainly she never came back.

That, of course, simplified matters considerably for Florence Grace--and
for the Happy Family as well. For at the preliminary hearing of H. J.
Owens for the high crime of kidnapping, that gentleman proceeded to
unburden his soul in a way that would have horrified Florence Grace,
had she been there to hear. Remember, I told you that his eyes were the
wrong shade of blue.

A man of whom you have never heard tried to slip out of the court room
during the unburdening process, and was stopped by Andy Green, who had
been keeping an eye on him for the simple reason that the fellow had
been much in the company of H. J. Owens during the week preceding
the fire and the luring away of the Kid. The sheriff led him off
somewhere--and so they had the man who had set the prairie afire.

As is the habit of those who confess easily the crimes of others, H. J.
Owens professed himself as innocent as he consistently could in the face
of the Happy Family and of the Kid's loud-whispered remarks when he saw
him there. He knew absolutely nothing about the fire, he said, and had
nothing to do with the setting of it. He was two miles away at the time
it started.

And then Miss Rosemary Allen took the witness stand and told about the
man on the hilltop and the bit of mirror that had flashed sun-signals
toward the west.

H.J. Owens crimpled down visibly in his chair. Imagine for yourself the
trouble he would have in convincing men of his innocence after that.

Just to satisfy your curiosity, at the trial a month later he failed
absolutely to convince the jury that he was anything but what he was--a
criminal without the strength to stand by his own friends. He was
sentenced to ten years in Deer Lodge, and the judge informed him that he
had been dealt