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With the very word upon his lips, he threw himself, face downwards, on the ground beneath it, and, with his fingers clutched in the soil, lay there for some moments, silent and still. In this attitude, albeit a skeptic and unorthodox man, he prayed. I cannot say–indeed I DARE not say–that his prayer was heard, or that God visited him thus. Let us rather hope that all there was of God in him, in this crucial moment of agony and shame, strove outward and upward. Howbeit, when the moon rose he rose too, perhaps a trifle less steady than the planet, and began to descend the hill with feverish haste, yet with this marked difference between his present haste and his former recklessness, that it seemed to have a well-defined purpose. When he reached the road again, he struck into a well-worn trail, where, in the distance, a light faintly twinkled. Following this beacon, he kept on, and at last flung himself heavily against the door of the little cabin from whose window the light had shone. As he did so, it opened upon the figure of a square, thickset man, who, in the impetuosity of Catron’s onset, received him, literally, in his arms.

“Captain Dick,” said Roger Catron, hoarsely, “Captain Dick, save me! For God’s sake, save me!”

Captain Dick, without a word, placed a large, protecting hand upon Catron’s shoulder, allowed it to slip to his waist, and then drew his visitor quietly, but firmly, within the cabin. Yet, in the very movement, he had managed to gently and unobtrusively possess himself of Catron’s pistol.

“Save ye! From which?” asked Captain Dick, as quietly and unobtrusively dropping the Derringer in a flour sack.

“From everything,” gasped Catron, “from the men that are hounding me, from my family, from my friends, but most of all–from, from–myself!”

He had, in turn, grasped Captain Dick, and forced him frenziedly against the wall. The captain released himself, and, taking the hands of his excited visitor, said slowly,–

“Ye wan some blue mass–suthin’ to unload your liver. I’ll get it up for ye.”

“But, Captain Dick, I’m an outcast, shamed, disgraced–“

“Two on them pills taken now, and two in the morning,” continued the captain, gravely, rolling a bolus in his fingers, “will bring yer head to the wind again. Yer fallin’ to leeward all the time, and ye want to brace up.”

“But, Captain,” continued the agonized man, again clutching the sinewy arms of his host, and forcing his livid face and fixed eyes within a few inches of Captain Dick’s, “hear me! You must and shall hear me. I’ve been in jail–do you hear?–in jail, like a common felon. I’ve been sent to the asylum, like a demented pauper. I’ve–“

“Two now, and two in the morning,” continued the captain, quietly releasing one hand only to place two enormous pills in the mouth of the excited Catron, “thar now–a drink o’ whisky–thar, that’ll do–just enough to take the taste out of yer mouth, wash it down, and belay it, so to speak. And how are the mills running, gin’rally, over at the Bar?”

“Captain Dick, hear me–if you ARE my friend, for God’s sake hear me! An hour ago I should have been a dead man–“

“They say that Sam Bolin hez sold out of the Excelsior–“

“Captain Dick! Listen, for God’s sake; I have suffered–“

But Captain Dick was engaged in critically examining his man. “I guess I’ll ladle ye out some o’ that soothin’ mixture I bought down at Simpson’s t’ other day,” he said, reflectively. “And I onderstand the boys up on the Bar think the rains will set in airly.”

But here Nature was omnipotent. Worn by exhaustion, excitement, and fever, and possibly a little affected by Captain Dick’s later potion, Roger Catron turned white, and lapsed against the wall. In an instant Captain Dick had caught him, as a child, lifted him in his stalwart arms, wrapped a blanket around him, and deposited him in his bunk. Yet, even in his prostration, Catron made one more despairing appeal for mental sympathy from his host.