There was more laughter at this, and Bill Brown turned away from him.  “Gentlemen, you have heard this pipe dream.  It is a wilder fairy story than his first.  At the beginning of the trial we promised to show that the truth was not in him.  That we succeeded, your verdict is ample testimony.  But that he should likewise succeed, and more brilliantly, we did not expect.  That he has, you cannot doubt.  What do you think of him?  Lie upon lie he has given us; he has been proven a chronic liar; are you to believe this last and fearfully impossible lie?  Gentlemen, I can only ask that you reaffirm your judgment.  And to those who may doubt his mendacity,—­surely there are but few,—­let me state, that if his story is true; if he broke salt with this man, John Borg, and lay in his blankets while murder was done; if he did hear, unmoved, the voice of the man calling to him for help; if he did lie there and watch that carnival of butchery without his manhood prompting him,—­let me state, gentlemen, I say, let me state that he is none the less deserveful of hanging.  We cannot make a mistake.  What shall it be?”

“Death!” “String him up!” “Stretch ’m!” were the cries.

But the crowd suddenly turned its attention to the river, and even Blackey refrained from his official task.  A large raft, worked by a sweep at either end, was slipping past the tail of Split-up Island, close to the shore.  When it was at their feet, its nose was slewed into the bank, and while its free end swung into the stream to make the consequent circle, a snubbing-rope was flung ashore and several turns taken about the tree under which St. Vincent stood.  A cargo of moose-meat, red and raw, cut into quarters, peeped from beneath a cool covering of spruce boughs.  And because of this, the two men on the raft looked up to those on the bank with pride in their eyes.

“Tryin’ to make Dawson with it,” one of them explained, “and the sun’s all-fired hot.”

“Nope,” said his comrade, in reply to a query, “don’t care to stop and trade.  It’s worth a dollar and a half a pound down below, and we’re hustlin’ to get there.  But we’ve got some pieces of a man we want to leave with you.”  He turned and pointed to a loose heap of blankets which slightly disclosed the form of a man beneath.  “We gathered him in this mornin’, ’bout thirty mile up the Stewart, I should judge.”

“Stands in need of doctorin’,” the other man spoke up, “and the meat’s spoilin’, and we ain’t got time for nothin’.”  “Beggar don’t have anythin’ to say.  Don’t savve the burro.”  “Looks as he might have been mixin’ things with a grizzly or somethin’,—­all battered and gouged.  Injured internally, from the looks of it.  Where’ll you have him?”

Frona, standing by St. Vincent, saw the injured man borne over the crest of the bank and through the crowd.  A bronzed hand drooped down and a bronzed face showed from out the blankets.  The bearers halted near them while a decision could be reached as to where he should be carried.  Frona felt a sudden fierce grip on her arm.