Just then Harriet entered the room softly and turned his light down still lower.

“Stay back here,” she said, her tone almost a command.

“Why?”

“If they get Toot out, it would be just like him to try to—­ You—­you are not strong enough to get out of their way.  Oh, I don’t know what to do!” She went back to the window in the next room.  He followed her, and stood by her side.

The white figures had dismounted at the jail.  They paused at the gate a moment, then filed into the yard and stood at the door.  The leader rapped on it loudly.

“Hello in thar, Tarpley Brown, show yorese’f!” he cried.

There was a silence for a moment.  In the moonlight the body of men looked like a snowdrift against the jail.  The same voice spoke again: 

“Don’t you keep us waitin’ long, nuther, Tarp.  You kin know what sort we are by our grave-clothes ef you’ll take the trouble to peep out o’ the winder.”

“What do you-uns want?” It was the quavering voice of the jailer, from the wing of the house occupied by him and his family.

His voice roused a sleeping infant, and it began to cry.  The cry was smothered by some one’s hand over the child’s mouth.

“You know what we-uns want,” answered the leader.  “We come after Toot Wambush; turn ’im out, ef you know what’s good fer you.”

“Gentlemen, I’m a sworn officer of the law, I—­”

“Drap that!  Open that cell door, ur we’ll put daylight through you.”

This was followed by the low, pleading voice of the jailer’s wife, begging her husband to comply with the demand, and the wailing of two or three children.

“Wait, then!” yielded the jailer.  Westerfelt heard a door slam and chains clank and rattle on the wooden floor; a bolt was slid back, the front door opened, and the white drift parted to receive a dark form.

“Whar’s my hoss?” doggedly asked Toot Wambush.

“Out thar hitched to the fence,” answered the leader.

“You-uns was a hell of a time comin’,” retorted Wambush.

“Had to git together; most uv us never even heerd uv yore capture tell a hour by sun.  Huh, you’d better thank yore stars we re’ched you when we did.”

The band filed out of the gate and mounted their horses.  Toot Wambush was a little in advance of the others.  He suddenly turned his horse towards the hotel.

Westerfelt instinctively drew back behind the curtain, Harriet caught his arm and clung to it.

“Go to your room!” she whispered.  “You’d better; you must not stay here.”  He seemed not to hear; he leaned forward and peered again through the window.  The leader and Wambush had just reined their horses in at the edge of the sidewalk.

“Come on, Toot; whar you gwine?” asked the leader.

“I want to take that feller with us; I’ll never budge ’thout him, you kin bet your bottom dollar on that.”