onversation with him?"

"I did, sir."

"What was it, in substance?"

"I explained to him that the plan was to kill Senator Goebel, when he
came to the senate that morning. I showed him two rifles in the
corner.... They were of different makes."

"What did he do then?"

"He had me explain the way to get to the basement. He kneeled down by
the window and sighted one of the guns.... He piled up several law books
to rest it on ... and then he said that he was ready...."

McCalloway's teeth were tight-clamped as he listened.

"Yes, go on."

"He said he had come to get a pardon for 'blowing down old man
Carr'--and was ready to give back favour for favour. Presently I saw
Senator Goebel turning in at the gate, and I said, 'That's him,' and he
said, 'I see him,' and I turned and slipped out of the room. As I was on
the stairs, I heard a rifle shot--and then several pistol shots."

Boone Wellver groaned, and the current of his arteries seemed to run in
icy trickles through his body, but he kept his eyes steadfastly fixed on
Asa, whose life, he felt sure, this man was swearing away in perjury.
Asa gazed back. He even inclined his head with just the ghost of a nod,
and the boy knew that he meant that for encouragement.

Through hours of that day the ghastly story unwound itself, and its
tremendous impact, gaining rather than losing impressiveness from the
faltering style of its telling, left the defence staggered and numbed.
McCalloway, glancing down at the boy's drawn face, felt his own heart
sicken.

But when at last the man with the gray face and the gray, striped livery
had gone, the Commonwealth's attorney rose and said in the full-throated
voice of master of the show, "Now, we will call Saul Fulton."

Saul, who had been indicted but never tried! Saul, too, had taken the
enemy's pay! Neither McCalloway nor Boone doubted that all this drama of
alleged revelation was fathered in falsity out of the reward fund and
its workings, yet one realized out of mature experience, and the other
out of instinct, that to the jury it must all seem irrefutable
demonstration.

In marked contrast with the sorry drabness of that last witness was the
swagger of the next, who came twirling his moustache with the gusto of
pure bravado.

Saul went back of the other's story and ramified its details. He told of
the mountain army which he had helped to recruit, and swore that that
force had come with a full understanding of its mission