that the fire had skirted. The major
sank exhaustedly to the ground; the sheriff threw himself beside him.
Their strange relations to each other seemed to have been forgotten;
they looked and acted as if they no longer thought of anything beyond
the present. And when the sheriff finally arose and, disappearing for
several minutes, brought his hat full of water for his prisoner from a
distant spring that they had passed in their flight, he found him where
he had left him--unchanged and unmoved.

He took the water gratefully, and after a pause fixed his eyes earnestly
upon his captor. "I want you to do a favor to me," he said slowly. "I'm
not going to offer you a bribe to do it either, nor ask you anything
that isn't in a line with your duty. I think I understand you now, if I
didn't before. Do you know Briggs's restaurant in Sacramento?"

The sheriff nodded.

"Well! over the restaurant are my private rooms, the finest in
Sacramento. Nobody knows it but Briggs, and he has never told. They've
been locked ever since I left; I've got the key still in my pocket. Now
when we get to Sacramento, instead of taking me straight to jail, I want
you to hold me THERE as your prisoner for a day and a night. I don't
want to get away; you can take what precautions you like--surround the
house with policemen, and sleep yourself in the ante-room. I don't want
to destroy any papers or evidence; you can go through the rooms and
examine everything before and after; I only want to stay there a day and
a night; I want to be in my old rooms, have my meals from the restaurant
as I used to, and sleep in my own bed once more. I want to live for one
day like a gentleman, as I used to live before I came here. That's all!
It isn't much, Tom. You can do it and say you require to do it to get
evidence against me, or that you want to search the rooms."

The expression of wonder which had come into the sheriff's face at
the beginning of this speech deepened into his old look of surly
dissatisfaction. "And that's all ye want?" he said gloomily. "Ye don't
want no friends--no lawyer? For I tell you, straight out, major, there
ain't no hope for ye, when the law once gets hold of ye in Sacramento."

"That's all. Will you do it?"

The sheriff's face grew still darker. After a pause he said: "I don't
say 'no,' and I don't say 'yes.' But," he added grimly, "it strikes me
we'd better wait till we get clear o' these woods afore you think o'
your Sacramento lo