“This will be a day of defeats and disappointments to you, my friends.  That boy won’t go to jail because you will wear the shackles yourselves.  Oh, you played a shrewd game, you two, with your senators, your politics, and your pulls; but it’s our turn now, and we’ll make you dance for the mines you gutted and the robberies you’ve done and the men you’ve ruined.  Thank Heaven there’s one honest court and I happened to find it.”  He turned to the strangers who had accompanied him from the ship, crying, “Serve those warrants,” and they stepped forward.

The uproar of the past few minutes had brought men running from every direction till, finding no room on the stairs, they had massed in the street below while the word flew from lip to lip concerning this closing scene of their drama, the battle at the Midas, the great fight up-stairs, and the arrest by the ’Frisco deputies.  Like Sindbad’s genie, a wondrous tale took shape from the rumors.  Men shouldered one another eagerly for a glimpse of the actors, and when the press streamed out, greeted it with volleys of questions.  They saw the unconscious marshal borne forth, followed by the old Judge, now a palsied wretch, slinking beside his captor, a very shell of a man at whom they jeered.  When McNamara lurched into view, an image of defeat and chagrin, their voices rose menacingly.  The pack was turning and he knew it, but, though racked and crippled, he bent upon them a visage so full of defiance and contemptuous malignity that they hushed themselves, and their final picture of him was that of a big man downed, but unbeaten to the last.  They began to cry for Glenister, so that when he loomed in the doorway, a ragged, heroic figure, his heavy shock low over his eyes, his unshaven face aggressive even in its weariness, his corded arms and chest bare beneath the fluttering streamers, the street broke into wild cheering.  Here was a man of their own, a son of the Northland who labored and loved and fought in a way they understood, and he had come into his due.

But Roy, dumb and listless, staggered up the street, refusing the help of every man except Wheaton.  He heard his companion talking, but grasped only that the attorney gloated and gloried.

“We have whipped them, boy.  We have whipped them at their own game.  Arrested in their very door-yards—­cited for contempt of court—­that’s what they are.  They disobeyed those other writs, and so I got them.”

“I broke his arm,” muttered the miner.

“Yes, I saw you do it!  Ugh! it was an awful thing.  I couldn’t prove conspiracy, but they’ll go to jail for a little while just the same, and we have broken the ring.”

“It snapped at the shoulder,” the other continued, dully, “just like a shovel handle.  I felt it—­but he tried to kill me and I had to do it.”

The attorney took Roy to his cabin and dressed his wounds, talking incessantly the while, but the boy was like a sleep-walker, displaying no elation, no excitement, no joy of victory.  At last Wheaton broke out: