“`Oh, you would squeal, would you?’ he cried, and in an instant he whipped out his revolver.  I sprang for his hand, but saw that I was too late, and jumped aside.  At the same instant he fired, and the bullet which would have struck me passed through the heart of my unfortunate brother.

“He dropped without a groan upon the floor of the compartment, and MacCoy and I, equally horrified, knelt at each side of him, trying to bring back some signs of life.  MacCoy still held the loaded revolver in his hand, but his anger against me and my resentment towards him had both for the moment been swallowed up in this sudden tragedy.  It was he who first realized the situation.  The train was for some reason going very slowly at the moment, and he saw his opportunity for escape.  In an instant he had the door open, but I was as quick as he, and jumping upon him the two of us fell off the footboard and rolled in each other’s arms down a steep embankment.  At the bottom I struck my head against a stone, and I remembered nothing more.  When I came to myself I was lying among some low bushes, not far from the railroad track, and somebody was bathing my head with a wet handkerchief.  It was Sparrow MacCoy.

“`I guess I couldn’t leave you,’ said he. `I didn’t want to have the blood of two of you on my hands in one day.  You loved your brother, I’ve no doubt; but you didn’t love him a cent more than I loved him, though you’ll say that I took a queer way to show it.  Anyhow, it seems a mighty empty world now that he is gone, and I don’t care a continental whether you give me over to the hangman or not.’

“He had turned his ankle in the fall, and there we sat, he with his useless foot, and I with my throbbing head, and we talked and talked until gradually my bitterness began to soften and to turn into something like sympathy.  What was the use of revenging his death upon a man who was as much stricken by that death as I was?  And then, as my wits gradually returned, I began to realize also that I could do nothing against MacCoy which would not recoil upon my mother and myself.  How could we convict him without a full account of my brother’s career being made public—­the very thing which of all others we wished to avoid?  It was really as much our interest as his to cover the matter up, and from being an avenger of crime I found myself changed to a conspirator against Justice.  The place in which we found ourselves was one of those pheasant preserves which are so common in the Old Country, and as we groped our way through it I found myself consulting the slayer of my brother as to how far it would be possible to hush it up.