e, had laid the
revolver to his own temple and fired, his father knocking it up in
time to produce only a scalp wound, and Saxby and others who had come in
overpowering him and taking it from him before he could fire again. They
stood guard over him the rest of the night, while he raved over Rich's
body. "Never did I see the likes of the love of them two boys," said
Saxby, with tears in his eyes. "And Blant in gineral so quiet,--nobody'd
a-dreamed he could keer so deep."

Then, with the coming of daylight, Blant had called for his nag and had
announced his determination to give himself up to the sheriff. "Since I
haint permitted to kill myself, the law must kill me," he had declared,
"for this misery is more than I can endure and live." In vain all tried
to dissuade him; he was adamant. "So the whole passel of us come over
with him," said Saxby. "Him and t'others stopped up here at the
sheriff's, but I come ahead to fetch the news to the little Marrs
chap."

"Never!" I said, "it might kill him, now. He must not know a word of
it."

"I allowed it might holp him up some to hear Todd was safe dead," he
apologized.

"He must hear nothing," I said.

Fifteen minutes later, a sad cavalcade came down the road. There were a
dozen or more men, and last of all, between the sheriff and deputy, rode
Blant, his face rigid with misery and horror. Pale, deathlike, unseeing,
he rode. When I ran out in the road to give him a word of sympathy he
looked straight through me, never seeing me. My boys and a gathering
crowd followed in awed silence to the jail.

XXIII

DESPAIR, AND BUDDING ROMANCE

_Thursday Evening._

I went to the jail to see Blant this morning,--but was almost sorry that
I did so. He sits there in his cell, speechless, despairing, refusing
food or rest, hearing and seeing nothing. In vain the jail-keeper and I
attempted to talk to him and tell him he must not reproach himself so
bitterly, or give way to such utter despair, since he was in no way to
blame for the death of his friend. He looked agonizingly beyond us,
evidently not conscious that we were talking.

The worst of it is that circuit court will not sit here again until
early April,--two and a half months, and his suffering must be cruelly
protracted.

After this visit it was almost impossible for me to go in and talk and
read cheerfully to Nucky, and make plausible excuses for Blant's
non-appearance, which is worrying him a great deal.