The sheriff snatched the light, and both men hastened to examine the prisoner’s hand.  After a single glance their eyes met and each set of optics inquired of the other.

At length the sheriff remarked:  “He’s your pris’ner.”

The circuit-rider flushed and then turned pale.  He took the lantern from the sheriff, turned the light full on the prisoner’s face, and said: 

“Prisoner, suppose you were to find that your father was alive?”

The horse-thief replied with a piercing glance, which was full of wonder, but said not a word.  A moment or two passed, and the preacher said: 

“Suppose you were to find that your father was alive, and had searched everywhere for you, and that he thought of nothing but you, and was all the time hoping for your return—­that he had grown old before his time, all because of his longing and sorrow for you?” The thief dropped his eyes, then his face twitched; at last he burst out crying.  “Your father is alive; he isn’t far from this cabin; he’s very sick; I’ve just left him.  Nothing but the sight of you will do him any good; but I think so much of him that I’d rather kill you this instant than let him know what business you’ve been in.”

“Them’s my sentiments, too,” remarked the sheriff.

“Let me see him!” exclaimed the prisoner, clasping and raising his manacled hands, while his face filled with an earnestness which was literally terrible—­“let me see him, if it’s only for a few minutes!  You needn’t be afraid that I’ll tell him what I am, and you won’t be mean enough to do it, if I don’t try to run away.  Have mercy on me!  You don’t know what it is to never have had anybody to love you, and then suddenly to find that there is some one that wants you!”

The preacher turned to the officer and said: 

“I’m a law-abiding citizen, sheriff.”

And the sheriff replied: 

“He’s your pris’ner.”

“Then suppose I let him go, on his promise to stick to his father for the rest of his life!”

“He’s your pris’ner,” repeated the sheriff.

“Suppose, then, I were to insist upon your taking him into custody.”

“Why, then,” said the sheriff, speaking like a man in the depths of meditation, “I would let him go myself, and—­and I’d have to shoot you to save my reputation as a faithful officer.”

The preacher made a peculiar face.  The prisoner exclaimed: 

“Hurry, you brutes!”

The preacher said, at last: 

“Let him loose.”

The sheriff removed the handcuffs, dived into his own pocket, brought out a pocket-comb and glass, and handed them to the thief; then he placed the lantern in front of him, and said: 

“Fix yourself up a little.  Your hat’s a miz’able one—­I’ll swap with you.  You’ve got to make up some cock-and-bull story now, for the old man’ll want to know everything.  You might say you’d been a sheriff down South somewhere since you got away from the feller that owned you.”