you all looked at
me what was in your minds. . . ."

"Yes, but how about that fishing expedition of ours, Gully?" said Yorke.
"You seem to have forgotten that." And he related the story of Redmond's
dive.

"Ah!" retorted Gully, bitterly. "And yet you might have got snagged a
hundred times there and only just cursed and snapped your line and reeled
in, thinking it was a log or something. . . . Well, as I was saying, I
realized the jig was up after that dog business, and directly I got home
I began making preparations for my get-away last night. If you'd all
only have come half an hour later than you did--That's what made me so
mad--just another half hour later, mind you, and I would have been
away--en route for the Coast by the night train."

Presently Kilbride threw aside his pen and straightened up. "Now,
listen, Gully!" he said. And he read out the confession that he had
composed from the main facts of the prisoner's remarkable statement.

"Yes!" muttered Gully thoughtfully, as the inspector finished. "Yes,
that will do, Kilbride. Give me the pen, please, and I will sign
it. . . ."

He proceeded to affix his signature, continuing with a sort of deadly
composure: "I have endorsed and executed many death-warrants in my
time--in my capacity of Deputy-Sheriff--I little thought that some day I
might be called upon to sign my own . . . which this document virtually
is. . . ."

He reared himself up to his huge, gaunt height, and with a sweeping
glance at his captors added: "Nothing remains for me now I imagine, but
to shake hands with--Radcliffe.[1] . . ."

And his dreadful voice died away like a single grim note of a great,
deep-toned bell, tolled perchance in some prison-yard.

"_Eshcorrt_! Get ready!" boomed out Sergeant Slavin's harsh command.
The party was on the station platform. Yorke and McSporran fell in
briskly on either side of their heavily-manacled prisoner, and stood
watching the distant lights of the oncoming east-bound train as it
rounded the Davidsburg bend.

One last despairing glance Gully cast about him at the all familiar
surroundings, then he raised his fettered hands on high and lifted up his
great voice:

"I have striven! I have striven!--and now!--Oh! there is no God! Bear
witness there is no God! No God! . . ." he cried to the heavens.

The wild, harsh, dreadful blasphemy rang far and wide out into the night,
floating over the nearby river and finally dying away a ghastl