fugitive from justice. From the county jail where he had been
confined to await his trial he had escaped by knocking down his
jailer with an iron bar, robbing him of his keys and, opening the
outer door, walking out into the night. The jailer being unarmed,
Brower got no weapon with which to defend his recovered liberty. As
soon as he was out of the town he had the folly to enter a forest;
this was many years ago, when that region was wilder than it is now.

The night was pretty dark, with neither moon nor stars visible, and
as Brower had never dwelt thereabout, and knew nothing of the lay of
the land, he was, naturally, not long in losing himself. He could
not have said if he were getting farther away from the town or going
back to it--a most important matter to Orrin Brower. He knew that
in either case a posse of citizens with a pack of bloodhounds would
soon be on his track and his chance of escape was very slender; but
he did not wish to assist in his own pursuit. Even an added hour of
freedom was worth having.

Suddenly he emerged from the forest into an old road, and there
before him saw, indistinctly, the figure of a man, motionless in the
gloom. It was too late to retreat: the fugitive felt that at the
first movement back toward the wood he would be, as he afterward
explained, "filled with buckshot." So the two stood there like
trees, Brower nearly suffocated by the activity of his own heart;
the other--the emotions of the other are not recorded.

A moment later--it may have been an hour--the moon sailed into a
patch of unclouded sky and the hunted man saw that visible
embodiment of Law lift an arm and point significantly toward and
beyond him. He understood. Turning his back to his captor, he