ause of his longing and sorrow for you?" The thief dropped
his eyes, then his face twitched; at last he burst out crying. "Your
father _is_ alive; he isn't far from this cabin; he's very sick; I've
just left him. Nothing but the sight of you will do him any good; but I
think so much of him that I'd rather kill you this instant than let him
know what business you've been in."

"Them's my sentiments, too," remarked the sheriff.

"Let me see him!" exclaimed the prisoner, clasping and raising his
manacled hands, while his face filled with an earnestness which was
literally terrible--"let me see him, if it's only for a few minutes! You
needn't be afraid that _I'll_ tell him what I am, and _you_ won't be
mean enough to do it, if I don't try to run away. Have mercy on me! You
don't know what it is to never have had anybody to love you, and then
suddenly to find that there _is_ some one that wants you!"

The preacher turned to the officer and said:

"I'm a law-abiding citizen, sheriff."

And the sheriff replied:

"He's _your_ pris'ner."

"Then suppose I let him go, on his promise to stick to his father for
the rest of his life!"

"He's your pris'ner," repeated the sheriff.

"Suppose, then, I were to insist upon your taking him into custody."

"Why, then," said the sheriff, speaking like a man in the depths of
meditation, "I would let him go myself, and--and I'd have to shoot _you_
to save my reputation as a faithful officer."

The preacher made a peculiar face. The prisoner exclaimed:

"Hurry, you brutes!"

The preacher said, at last:

"Let him loose."

The sheriff removed the handcuffs, dived into his own pocket, brought
out a pocket-comb and glass, and handed them to the thief; then he
placed the lantern in front of him, and said:

"Fix yourself up a little. Your hat's a miz'able one--I'll swap with
you. You've got to make up some cock-and-bull story now, for the old
man'll want to know everything. You might say you'd been a sheriff down
South somewhere since you got away from the feller that owned you."

The preacher paused over a knot in one of the cords on the prisoner's
legs, and said:

"Say you were a circuit-rider--that's more near the literal truth."

The sheriff seemed to demur somewhat, and he said, at length:

"Without meanin' any disrespect, parson, don't you think 'twould tickle
the old man and the citizens more to think he'd been a sheriff? They
wouldn't dare to ask him so many questions