THE several persons who had forced the judge to commit the School-teacher to the county jail, having gone down from the courthouse, remained throughout the day in conference. It was evident that the circuit judge had acted against his own inclination, and that he could not be depended upon to hold the prisoner in custody. Some other method for ridding the community of this undesirable person must be found. Finally, after long reflection, they hit upon a plan.

Night descended.

In the village saloon, beyond the grove of oak trees behind the courthouse, the man who had received the money from the minister sat playing at cards. A rifle stood in the corner behind him. From time to time he arose, took up the rifle and went to the door. Keeping thus, in his fashion, an agreement which the sheriff had forgotten.

The night advanced.

At twelve o'clock the sheriff went down into the jail. He carefully unfastened the door opening into the grove of oak trees. Then he came along the corridor to the one iron cage that the jail contained. The door to this cage he likewise carefully unlocked. On a bedtick filled with straw, two men, convicted of larceny, were apparently asleep beside this door. On a bench against the wall behind them sat the School-teacher. His hat with its little crimson feather lay beside him. He sat unmoving, looking at something in his hand. When he observed the sheriff, he put the thing which he held in his hand back into the bosom of his coat. It was the broken toy horse which the little boy had given him. The sheriff beckoned with his finger.

The School-teacher lifted his head and looked at the man, but he did not move from his place against the wall.

The sheriff stepped delicately past the men, whom he believed to be asleep, and approached the School-teacher.

“The door's open,” he said, “you can get out of the county before 't's daylight.”

The School-teacher did not reply, and the sheriff went noiselessly out. Presently the two men got up from their pretended sleep and slipped out of the cage. The School-teacher rose and spoke to them. But they crept down the corridor. He followed. He came upon them as they opened the door leading out of the jail into the grove, stepped between them in the door and thrust them back. The act saved the men's lives, but it cost the School-teacher his own.

There was the flash of a rifle from the saloon beyond the oak trees, and the School-teacher fell forward, his arms outstretched.

In the evening some women and children from the mountains came to the circuit judge and asked him for the body of the School-teacher. He gave it to them, and at night they took it away.

An ox, led by a little boy, bore the body, and women walking beside it supported it with their hands.

They traveled back into the mountains.

And at daybreak they laid the body in a grave which they had made between the two great hickories on the ridge beyond Nicholas Parks' house. They lined the grave with bright-colored leaves, and wrapped the body in that piece of linen which the School-teacher had bade the miller keep for him until he should need it. The hands of women and children filled the grave with earth. Then they went away down the mountain, toward the mill, leaving a woman crouched beside the grave. Her apron covering her yellow hail. Her body rocking.

It was morning.

They went down the mountain, the boy and the ox, the little girl, the two remaining women—one of them carrying a tiny sleeping boy wrapped in a shawl, a dog beside her.

On a bench of the mountain below, where a tree, uprooted by the wind, lay with its broken trunk pointing toward the ridge, they stopped and looked back. As they looked, the sun arose, a disc of gold between the two great hickories.

With a wild harking, the dog leaped onto the fallen trunk, ran out to the projecting end of it, and stood there looking toward the sun.

The tiny boy moved 'n his mother's arms.

“Nim see Teacher,” he said.