suddenly on Gideon, said:

"P'r'aps YOU'RE a preacher?"

"I am."

"Can you come to a dying man?"

"I will."

The two men again looked at each other. "But," continued Gideon,
softly, "you'll please keep quiet so as not to disturb the widow and
her children, while I get my horse." He turned away; the younger man
made a movement as if to stop him, but the elder quickly restrained his
hand. "He isn't goin' to run away," he whispered. "Look," he added,
as Gideon a moment later reappeared mounted and equipped.

"Do you think we'll be in time?" asked the young preacher as they rode
quickly away in the direction of the tules.

The younger repressed a laugh; the other answered grimly, "I reckon."

"And is he conscious of his danger?"

"I reckon."

Gideon did not speak again. But as the onus of that silence seemed to
rest upon the other two, the last speaker, after a few moments' silent
and rapid riding, continued abruptly, "You don't seem curious?"

"Of what?" said Gideon, lifting his soft eyes to the speaker. "You
tell me of a brother at the point of death, who seeks the Lord through
an humble vessel like myself. HE will tell me the rest."

A silence still more constrained on the part of the two strangers
followed, which they endeavored to escape from by furious riding; so
that in half an hour the party had reached a point where the tules
began to sap the arid plain, while beyond them broadened the lagoons of
the distant river. In the foreground, near a clump of dwarfed willows,
a camp-fire was burning, around which fifteen or twenty armed men were
collected, their horses picketed in an outer circle guarded by two
mounted sentries. A blasted cotton-wood with a single black arm
extended over the tules stood ominously against the dark sky.

The circle opened to receive them and closed again. The elder man
dismounted and leading Gideon to the blasted cotton-wood, pointed to a
pinioned man seated at its foot with an armed guard over him. He looked
up at Gideon with an amused smile.

"You said it was a dying man," said Gideon, recoiling.

"He will be a dead man in half an hour," returned the stranger.

"And you?"

"We are the Vigilantes from Alamo. This man," pointing to the
prisoner, "is a gambler who killed a man yesterday. We hunted him
here, tried him an hour ago, and found him guilty. The last man we
hung here, three years ago, asked for a parson. We brought him the man
who used to live whe