“Young man,” said he, “you’ve been as good as an angel could have been, but if you suspect her a minute of being my accomplice, may heaven blast you!  I taught her engraving, villain that I was, but when she found out what the work really was, I thought she’d have died.  She begged and begged that I’d give the business up, and I promised and promised, but it isn’t easy to get out of a crowd of your own kind, particularly when you’re not so much of a man as you should be.  At last she got sick of waiting, and ran away—­then I grew desperate and worse than ever.  I’ve been searching everywhere for her; you don’t suppose a smart—­smart counterfeiter has to get rid of his money in the way I’ve been doing, do you?  I traced her to this part of the State, and I’ve been going over the roads again and again trying to find her; but I never saw her until she put this hole through my arm last night.”

“I hadn’t any idea who you were,” interrupted the sheriff, with a face so full of mingled indignation, pain and tenderness, that Jim couldn’t for the life of him take his eyes from it.

“Don’t let any one suspect her, young man,” continued the father.  “I’ll stay within reach—­deliver me up, if it should be necessary to clear her.”

“Trust to me,” said Jim.  “I know a man when I see him, even if he is a woman.”

Two days later the sheriff rode into town, leading behind him the counterfeiter’s horses, with the wagon and its contents, with thousands of dollars in counterfeit money.  The counterfeiter had escaped, he said, and he had wounded him.

Bunkerville ran wild with enthusiasm, and when the sheriff insisted upon paying out of his own pocket the value of Braymer’s and Williamson’s horses, men of all parties agreed that Charley Mansell should be run for Congress on an independent ticket.

But the sheriff declined the honor, and, declaring that he had heard of the serious illness of his father, insisted upon resigning and leaving the country.  Like an affectionate son, he purchased some dress-goods, which he said might please his mother, and then he departed, leaving the whole town in sorrow.

There was one man at Bunkerville who did not suffer so severely as he might have done by the sheriff’s departure, had not his mind been full of strange thoughts.  Pete Williamson began to regard his brother with suspicion, and there seemed some ground for his feeling.  Jim was unnaturally quiet and abstracted; he had been a great deal with the sheriff before that official’s departure, and yet did not seem to be on as free and pleasant terms with him as before.  So Pete slowly gathered a conviction that the sheriff was on the track of a large reward from the bank injured by the counterfeiter; that Jim was to have a share for his services on the eventful night; that there was some disagreement between them on the subject, and that Jim was trying the unbrotherly trick of keeping his luck a secret from the brother who had resolved to fraternally share anything he might have obtained by the chase.  Finally, when Pete charged his brother with the unkindness alluded to, and Jim looked dreadfully confused, Pete’s suspicions were fully confirmed.