and turned to them with even a suggestion of relief.

"She's right, gentlemen," he said gravely. "She's right. It might have
been otherwise. I might have allowed that it might be otherwise,--but
she's right. I'm a Soth'n man myself, gentlemen, and I reckon to
understand what she has done. I killed the only man that had a right to
stand up for her, and she has now to stand up for herself. But if she
wants--and you see she allows she wants--to pass that on to some of you,
or all of you, I'm willing. As many as you like, and in what way
you like--I waive any chyce of weapon--I'm ready, gentlemen. I came
here--with HIM--for that purpose."

Perhaps it may have been his fateful resignation; perhaps it may have
been his exceeding readiness,--but there was no response. He sat down
again, and again swung his hat slowly and gloomily to and fro under his
chair.

"I've got him in a box at the stage office," he went on, apparently to
the carpet. "I had him dug up that I might bring him here, and mebbe
bury some of the trouble and difference along with his friends. It
might be," he added, with a slightly glowering upward glance, as to an
overruling, but occasionally misdirecting Providence,--"it might be
from the way things are piling up on me that some one might have rung in
another corpse instead o' HIM, but so far as I can judge, allowin' for
the space of time and nat'ral wear and tear--it's HIM!"

He rose slowly and moved towards the door in a silence that was as much
the result of some conviction that any violent demonstration against him
would be as grotesque and monstrous as the situation, as of anything
he had said. Even the flashing indignation of Julia Jeffcourt seemed