THE news of the tragedy ran like a flame through the streets of the town. Within five minutes the Blade had it bulletined; men were telephoning it home to their wives, and Sergeant Thorpe, a man of discernment and sympathy, was communicating it to his chief in his committee room at the State Capitol.
"Terrible!" groaned Henry. "Hogan had a wife and a whole raft of kids, didn't he?"
"Six," said Thorpe, "and the town is wild. They're raising a regular army; they'll get Adam John at daylight, but the worst of it is, he's sure to get some more of them first."
"Of course he is, the obstinate fool!" But Henry was suddenly conscience-stricken. "The poor devil!" he ejaculated, beginning to remember. Self-reproaches stabbed him. He was thinking: "I ought to have given Adam John more time, made sure that he understood about the law. I'm to blame for this, in a way. Really, I am."
The voice of Sergeant Thorpe broke in: "If they take him alive, they're going to lynch him in front of the courthouse for an example to the whole radical element, Salzberg and his crowd, Soderman and his Bolsheviks, and these stubborn Indians too that are always ducking the white man's law."
"But they mustn't do that, Thorpe," insisted Henry, autocratically, exactly as if he had the power to com-
