served or not at his discretion, if further evidence was found, which, in his judgment, warranted it. Then we all went into the county auditor's office, and sure enough, there was a deed recorded, conveying the ranch to Walters. The auditor said a friend of Charlie's had come in as soon as the office opened in the morning and said Walters had given it to him over night and asked him to have it recorded the first thing in the morning. Bryant and I then constituted ourselves a committee of two to make some quiet investigations about town, but we could hear of no one that had seen Robins, or any means other than the stage by which he could have got away.

Having found occasion to make casual inquiries of Susie, she said, "Paw had got in so late the night before and had so much to see to that he had n't time to hunt her up at the dance to say goodby, but had sent his love to her by Charlie and said he would be back in three or four months."

She seemed a little hurt by his neglect but not to think it strange. Then turning our attention to Walters, we found his movements very open to inspection. He had driven into the livery stable about half past ten without the horses having any appearance of being worried or heated with their sixty mile drive, had given particular directions about their feed and care, and told the hostler not to mind about washing off the buggy as he must be off again by two o'clock, having to get back to Silver City that afternoon. Then he had gone to a store next door, where one of the proprietors was making up his books after business was over, and bought a dollar's worth of green. coffee for Mrs. Simpson and put it under the buggy-seat. Then he had gone to his room at the hotel and freshened up his toilet a bit without changing his

clothes, and gone down stairs to the dance. After it was over, he had gone with Susie, in company with others, to a restaurant and got supper, had seen her home, then got his team and started off again about half past two in the morning on the road over which he had come a few hours previously.

We took a rockaway, and the sheriff, Simpson, Bryant, and myself, started on his track, literally; for either of the men I was with could have followed the track of those particular buggy-wheels to Hades over a better traveled highway than the one that we were on.

The thing we were puzzling over as we went was, where was Walters that Simpson did not meet him as he was coming in that morning. A couple of hours over the level road brought us to the place where the buggy had behaved itself so queerly the night before; and strange to say, the wheel-tracks left the road at nearly the same spot, going back, though Simpson was too busy with the up-tracks to have noticed it.

We all got out and proceeded to investigate. It was Bryant who made the first discovery-Robins's hat; and the next one also, the place under a clump of greasewood where some heavy body had evidently lain; and beside it wheeltracks and plunging hoof-marks. The scent was now very hot, and we followed it back to the road and on toward the Ferry. As we climbed into the rockaway Bryant scratched his head thoughtfully.

"The man is an idiot," said he; "and yet, how did he manage those horses through all this thing?"

On we went another hour or more.

"Do you suppose," said Bryant, "the rascal had that corpse crammed into the buggy box under his feet all this time? Whatever he did to him he could not have shot him sitting beside him, for he

would have been spattered all over, and the body would have fallen out between the wheels or over the dashboard on the horses. Ha! what's this?"

Again the accusing wheel-tracks left the road and made off into the waste, striking towards the river below the Ferry, now about five miles away.

"This is where he was," said Simpson, "when I was on the road, that I I did not meet him."

We none of us had much to say as we crunched over the sandy earth and bumped through the sagebrush under the blazing midday sun. I don't know what we thought we were going to find, but we found nothing at all except wheeltracks, only part of the way a trail of green coffee betwixt them. They went on down to the river, made a turn there, and came back to the road again, a mile below where they had left it. It was plain to be seen, however, that the horses had made objections again as they stood above the river while something was pushed over the high bank into its current; for the over hanging sandy brink was broken away at the edges, and the hoof-marks showed more protesting plunges.

"The fellow must have had the Devil along to hold that team for him," said Bryant.

We tried to look as if nothing had happened as we drove up to the Ferry, but the object of our suspicion was not there; his team was standing quietly in the stable, munching a feed of barley, but he had gone out for stroll till dinner was ready. We gave that buggy and harness a thorough going over, but found no trace of anything to confirm our ideas but a few coffee berries in the bottom of the buggy. Then we went out for a stroll too. We soon found Walters's tracks going down the edge of the bluff on the opposite side of the river, and followed them a couple of miles.

"He was taking a little walk down to see if the river were keeping its secret," said Bryant, who acted the part of chorus for this tragedy.

In this part of the Snake are a number of low islands, below the level of the precipitous banks on either side, covered with water in the winter and with a bountiful crop of natural hay in the summer. Some of them are two or three acres in extent and on the largest of them some men were cutting the wild grass at the lower end. Opposite these men Walters had stopped, and inquiry from them elicited the fact that Walters had hailed them and asked one of them to bring over their boat, saying he thought he had seen a deer in the brushwood on the upper end of the island and he wanted to go over and get it. Thought he could fetch it down with his pistol, he said. The men declined to leave their work for any such foolishness, and he had gone away.

"The body had evidently lodged on the island," said Bryant. "You will observe," he added, "that on all this desert plain, he could not pick up a handful of rocks to weight its pockets with, or a bowlder to tie around its neck."

That fact had not struck the rest of us before, but so it was.

"What will he do now, I wonder," muttered Simpson, who was scenting along like a bloodhound after its prey.

With him, the quest was inspired by desire of vengeance on his old pard's murderer, with perhaps some added secret spite of his own. With the sheriff, it was his duty. As for myself, I am afraid I had no more worthy motive than curiosity, tempered by unbelief, because of a liking I had always for the graceless boy we were hunting down. But with Bryant it was an inborn passion for solving problems of whatever character,-for putting "two and two together and deducing x.

"Aha!" said Bryant, "he undressed and swam across and pushed off the body from where it had lodged. The chain of evidence is complete Mr. Sheriff."

The sheriff scratched his head thoughtfully. The cadaver is all we want now," he said. "But I guess I'll have to take him in,-provided we catch him."

We hastened back in a sudden panic, lest the bird were flown; but no, there he was, sitting on the front stoop, and hailed us cheerfully with the information that dinner was waiting, and, adjured us to hurry up, because "he was so hungry his stomach thought his throat was cut." We went in to dinner and our hostess apologized for serving tea, but she said she had forgotten to get coffee the day before up in Silver City, and that Mr. Walters had forgotten it too the night before in Boise. A sudden flash of intelligence passed from eye to eye at that, for each one thought of the trail of green coffee. We all had less appetite and worse spirits than Walters, though I am sure he knew full well what we were after.

When the sheriff arrested him he showed great surprise, but no resentment. "Well boys," he said, "this is a great mare's nest you have hatched out amongst you, and you'll all feel mighty cheap when old Dick Robins comes back from Kansas with a band of cattle in two or three months. But in the meantime,— go on with your pig-sticking."

We all did feel mighty cheap even then, so overborne were we by his gay

open-hearted manner. All but Simpson.

There is not much more to tell. Walters was held to await the action of the next grand jury. Opinion as to his innocence or guilt was about equally divided. Susie Robins believed first in his innocence and would have clung to him through all; but the first time she went to see him, he looked at her strangely, and said: "Susie, little girl, there is blood on the moon and spots on the sun when they shine on you and me now. You stay home like the good girl you are, and say your prayers, till this thing blows over." And then he kissed her gently and sent her away.

Several parties had been out searching for Robins's body, but had not found any trace of it. No one believed Walters would be indicted so long as not even the deed had been proven conclusively. And so the rainless summer and the dusty fall wore on; the infrequent springs dried up, and the rivers shrunk in their beds, unable longer to meet the glaring eye of day. The grand jury met, late in October. That body, as individuals pretty well convinced of his guilt, put off the consideration of Walters's case until the last possible moment; and if truth were told, dallied over other business as long as their consciences would permit, hoping against the impossible that some new evidence would turn up.

And so their term came to within two days of its expiration, and Walters was looking forward with confidence to his free dom within forty-eight hours; when in the chilly autumnal twilight two sunbrowned young surveyors drove into Boise town. That they drove a wonderfully fine span of mules and had a sybaritic camping outfit, would perhaps have excited little comment; but it caused a great deal that they had come through the Bad Lands, up the upper Columbia, and the Snake from its junction

desolate and weary land, where no man went, or came, save prowling, hostile Indians. What in the name of all that is unblessed they were surveying or looking for in that country, all Boise, inside of an hour, was wild to know. Of course they did not tell; that is not the way of those fellows when they are on their masters' business. But what they But what they did mention was, that a day's journey down the Snake, where it left its high banks and spread and shallowed, the naked skeleton of a man lay beached and bleaching under the unwinking sun. Next day dawn the sheriff and coroner and several others of us who wanted to "see it out" started down to investigate. We found the skeleton fast enough, stripped by the coyotes and buzzards of every vestige of flesh, and bristling all over with grisly medusa locks of naked sinews and tendons that the coyotes had left still attached to the joints when they tore off the flesh from the bones in long strips with their strong white teeth. The cloudless brilliant sky looked down on it cruelly, and nameless nightmares with leering faces seemed lurking in the sagebrush clumps around about, and peering wickedly at the horror-fascinated group that stood without speaking, at a little distance, gazing at the uncanny Thing.

The sheriff was the first to recover speech. "Not a vestige of clothing, not a scrap of paper, to identify it by, unless it can be done by that boot."

We had all been looking at that one intact, booted foot, which gave an added touch of grotesque horror to the murdered, buffeted Thing before us.

"You forget Robins's glass eye," said Bryant quietly; and stepping forward, he picked up the skull and shook it, when lo! the Glass Eye answered to the summons with a ghastly tinkle.

Then we all took courage to approach

the Thing and examine it. At the base of the skull behind the left ear was the clean-cut hole where the leaden messenger from a six-shooter had crashed in, and in the right temple the larger one where it had sped out, carrying with it an unshriven soul.

"The scoundrel certainly managed to get on the blind side of his old pard in more ways than one," said Bryant grimly.

When we got the horrid Thing into Boise next evening, Susie Robins came to look at it, a pale specter of herself, "Take off that boot" she commanded in hard dry tones. It was done, not without difficulty, and the mummied shank and foot exposed to view. Shivering with fear and repulsion, her teeth chattering behind her drawn lips, Susie came up to it and bent over it. Then the shriek of a soul in torture went up," "Oh, my God! That's my Paw!"

We got her out somehow, and at the inquest she came in with a stony face and told us how she had seen her father one day, in a fit of rage at the annoyance of an ingrowing nail that had bothered him for long, sit down on the doorstep with a chisel and sledge hammer and chisel off his own middle toe.

Walters was indicted and tried, convicted, and hung, with all the leisureliness characteristic of American justice as administered by law. He never admitted his guilt, but said there were more men than one in the country with glass eyes and missing toes.

The day before he was executed, he sent for his lawyer and conveyed the ranch to Susie Robins.

He mounted the scaffold without displaying either fear or bravado, and turning at last to survey the crowd, saw Simpson standing there. Hullo Simp

son! Are you there?" he said cheerfully. "One good turn deserves another,

they say, but you see I have n't given you away. So long! old man. I'll try and pick out a coolish sort of place and stake out a claim for you alongside of mine."

Those were his last words, and before the drop fell, Simpson had stalked away, white and shaking, to live out his allotted time among men.

Batterman Lindsay.

I.

N THREE minutes," said Rufus Barrington, "the boy will be here."

As he spoke he closed his heavy watch with a snap and returned it to his pocket.

The announcement fell crisply upon a silence and Mr. Barrington, raising his massive head, gazed genially at his assembled family. His glance, patriarchal so to speak-in quality, rested first upon. the plump person of his wife, a small woman, delicately featured, who sat shading her face from the glare of the fire and indulging (as would appear from the expression of her mouth) in delightful introspection. Then it passed quickly to the charming figure of his daughter, and lingered there. Not quite a beauty, Helen Barrington possessed an air of distinction, but despite the brilliancy of her personality, there was apparent to a close observer - an infusion of melancholy. She might have posed as Euphrosyne, but her eyes, heavily lidded and luminous, were the eyes of the daughter of Vesta. She stood upon the hearthrug, leaning gracefully against the carved pilasters of the mantel, and her slender foot tapped impatiently the gleaming bars of the fender.

"How restless you are, Helen," said her brother. "If you're not wagging your tongue you insist on wagging your foot."

"I dislike waiting."

Her brother laughed. He was indolently turning the pages of a magazine. "You dislike many things, Helen, and many persons. Dislikes, I should say, are your forte."

The girl frowned but made no reply. Mrs. Barrington sighed.

"Henry," cried his father, "leave your sister alone, sir. You are old enough and smart enough to keep the peace. You will find a bitter tongue an expensive luxury.”

The young man bowed. His handsome face, pale and slightly haggard, flushed. The president of a bank, even if he be but twenty-six years old, has a right to resent criticism. He was meditating a retort, but the words died upon his lips as the scrunching of carriage wheels upon gravel became audible in the room. A minute later the door was burst unceremoniously open and a grayulstered figure stood upon the threshold. Instantly all was life and animation. The stranger picked up Mrs. Barrington in his 'strong arms and kissed her repeatedly. Eager questions and replies were tossed to and fro, but at length, the