of
his bereft of all expression.

"Give him till morning to weaken. If he still stays obstinate, hang
him in the dawn," decided the governor, his beady eyes fixed on the
prisoner.

Not a flicker of the eyelid betrayed the Arizonian's emotion, but for
an instant the world swam dizzily before him. Safe till morning! Before
then a hundred chances might change the current of the game in his
favor. How brightly the sunshine flooded the room! What a glorious
world it was, after all! Through the open window poured the rich,
full-throated song of a meadow lark, and the burden of its blithe song
was, "How good is this life the mere living."

CHAPTER 13. BUCKY'S FIRST-RATE REASONS

How long Frances Mackenzie gave herself up to despair she never knew,
but when at last she resolutely took herself in hand it seemed hours
later. "Bucky told me to be brave, he told me not to lose my nerve," she
repeated to herself over and over again, drawing comfort from the memory
of his warm, vibrant voice. "He said he would come back, and he hates
a liar. So, of course, he will come." With such argument she tried to
allay her wild fears.

But on top of all her reassurances would come a swift, blinding vision
of gallant Bucky being led to his death that crumpled her courage as a
hammer might an empty egg shell. What was the use of her pretending all
was well when at that very moment they might be murdering him? Then in
her agony she would pace up and down, wringing her hands, or would beat
them on the stone walls till the soft flesh was bruised and bleeding.

It was in the reaction, after one of these paroxysms of despair, that
in her groping for an anchor to make fast her courage she thought of his
letter.

"He said in three hours I was to read it if he didn't come back. It must
be more than three hours now," she said aloud to herself, and knew a
fresh dread at his prolonged absence beyond the limit he had set.

In point of fact, he had been gone less than three-quarters of an hour,
but in each one of them she had lived a lifetime of pain and died many
deaths.

By snatches she read her letter, a sentence or a fragment of a sentence
at a time as the light served. Luckily he had left a case nearly full of
matches, and one after another of them dropped, charred and burned out,
before she had finished reading. After she had read it, her first love
letter, she must needs go over it again, to learn by heart the sweet
phrases in which he