you had better say it now.”  For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his strange advocate met.  Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and, saying, “Euchred, old man!” held out his hand.  Tennessee’s Partner took it in his own, and saying, “I just dropped in as I was passin’ to see how things was gettin’ on,” let the hand passively fall, and adding that it was a warm night, again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and without another word withdrew.

The two men never again met each other alive.  For the unparalleled insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch—­who, whether bigoted, weak, or narrow, was at least incorruptible—­firmly fixed in the mind of that mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee’s fate; and at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the top of Marley’s Hill.

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported, with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future evildoers, in the red dog Clarion, by its editor, who was present, and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader.  But the beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and above all, the infinite Serenity that thrilled through each, was not reported, as not being a part of the social lesson.  And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was done, and a life, with its possibilities and responsibilities, had passed out of the misshapen thing that dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the red dog Clarion was right.

Tennessee’s Partner was not in the group that surrounded the ominous tree.  But as they turned to disperse attention was drawn to the singular appearance of a motionless donkey cart halted at the side of the road.  As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable “Jenny” and the two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee’s Partner—­used by him in carrying dirt from his claim; and a few paces distant the owner of the equipage himself, sitting under a buckeye tree, wiping the perspiration from his glowing face.  In answer to an inquiry, he said he had come for the body of the “diseased,” “if it was all the same to the committee.”  He didn’t wish to “hurry anything”; he could “wait.”  He was not working that day; and when the gentlemen were done with the “diseased,” he would take him.  “Ef thar is any present,” he added, in his simple, serious way, “as would care to jine in the fun’l, they kin come.”  Perhaps it was from a sense of humor, which I have already intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar—­perhaps it was from something even better than that; but two-thirds of the loungers accepted the invitation at once.