“Look out there,” cried one excitedly; “don’t let him escape; here’s the handcuffs.”

“But here,” cried Phelan, “what’s up; what you doing to me?”

By this time Corporal, thoroughly roused, made a vicious lunge at the nearest man.  The next minute there was a sharp report of a pistol, and the bull-terrier went yelping and limping out into the night.

“You coward!” cried Phelan, struggling to rise, “if you killed that dog—­”

“Get those shackles on his legs,” shouted one of the men.  “Is the wagon ready, Sam?  Take his legs there, I’ve got his head.  Leave the truck here, we’ve got to drive like sand to catch that train!”

After being dragged to the road and thrown into a spring wagon, Phelan found himself lying on his back, jolting over a rough country road, his three vigilant captors sitting beside him with pistols in hand.

Any effort on his part to explain or seek information was promptly and emphatically discouraged.  But in time he gathered, from the bits let fall by his captors, that he was an escaped convict, of a most desperate character, for whom a reward was offered, and that he had been at large twenty-four hours.

In vain did he struggle for a hearing.  Only once did he get a response to his oft-repeated plea of innocence.  It was when he told how he had come by the clothes he had on.  For once Phelan got a laugh when he did not relish it.

“Got ’em off a scarecrow, did you?” said the man at his head, when the fun had subsided; “say, I want to be ’round when you tell that to the Superintendent of the Penitentiary—­I ain’t heard him laugh in ten years!”

So, in the face of such unbelief, Phelan lapsed into silence and gloom.  What became of him concerned him less, at the moment, than the fate of Corporal, and the thought of the faithful little beast wounded and perhaps dying out there in the fields, made him sick at heart.

Just as they came in sight of the lights of the station, the whistle of the freight was heard down the track and the horses were beaten to a gallop.

Phelan was hurried from the wagon into an empty box car, with his full guard in attendance.  As the train pulled out he heard a little whimper beside him and there, panting for breath after his long run, and with one ear hanging limp and bloody, cowered Corporal.  Phelan’s hands were not at his disposal, but even if they had been it is doubtful if he would have denied Corp the joy for once of kissing him.

Through the rest of the night the heavy cars rumbled over the rails, and the men took turn about sleeping and guarding the prisoner.  Only once did Phelan venture another question: 

“Say, you sports, you don’t mind telling me where you are taking me, do you?”

“Listen at his gaff!” said one.  “He’ll know all right when he gets to Nashville.”

Phelan sent such a radiant smile into the darkness that it threatened to reveal itself.  Then he slipped his encircled wrists about Corporal’s body and giving him a squeeze whispered: