“My name is Ballard, but I reckon no one around here knows me.”

“I reckon you’re right, you villain! and now what brings you here?”

“I came here to see a woman named Betsy Pearce.”

“You came here to see a woman named Betsy Pearce?”

“Yes.”

“What brought you here to see Betsy Pearce?”

“That’s my business.”

“You’ve been here before, to-night, old man!”

“Who says so?”

“We all do.”

“Then you are all mistaken!”

“We are, eh?  Well, my friend, it stands you in hand to give an account of yourself, and explain your presence here, or tomorrow’s sun will never rise before your eyes!”

“Will you men explain why I am assailed this way?”

“My friend, Tom Pearce, has been found in his cabin unconscious!”

The detective gave a start, and a shudder passed over his stalwart frame.  The start and shudder were the result of far different causes than the men around him supposed, but they noticed his momentary agitation, and one of them exclaimed: 

“We’ve got the right man!  And now, boys, get a rope; there’ll be no foolin’ in this case!”

Meantime one of the men entered the cabin and whispered to Renie, who was weeping over the body of her murdered father.

“They’ve caught the rascal, miss, and they’re going to hang him!”

The girl uttered a scream, a wild piercing wail of anguish and terror!  At that terrible moment it flashed across her mind that the men had caught Spencer Vance, and had concluded that the detective was the assailant of her father.

The girl rushed from the cabin screaming: 

“Hold!  Hold! do not harm that man!  He is innocent!  Hold!  Hold, I say!”

The girl advanced to the center of the group of men that surrounded the detective, still exclaiming: 

“Do not harm that man! he is innocent!  He is innocent!”

She approached close to the prisoner; one of the men held the the lantern so its gleam shone full in the detective’s face, and he inquired: 

“Do you know him, Renie?”

The girl fixed her eyes on the prisoner and recoiling, exclaimed: 

“No, no, I do not know him!  I thought it was another man!  He must be the one!”

As the excited girl spoke she pointed toward the detective.

The latter still stood, the coolest party amidst all there assembled.

Renie had taken but a cursory glance at the prisoner.  One glance had been sufficient to prove to her that it was not the detective, and observing the man’s swarthy complexion she connected him with the Cuban Garcia, and it was the latter fact which in the excitement of the moment caused her to exclaim

“He must be the one!”

As stated, the detective was perfectly cool, but he realized his position in all its terribleness, and more fully, when one of the men said: