clearly that his questioners were inspired by no idle curiosity, but welcomed him as a friend and took a friend's interest in his affairs. The problem of the future of Canada, and of the Anglo-American alliance, being happily solved, we fell asleep one by one to the howling of the distant coyotes and the occasional scrambling of the hobbled horses as they searched about for fresher bits of grass.

At dawn we separated pursuant to our plan of overnight, Morley and I keeping not too far from the canyon, from whose billowing sides we could command the trail along the stream. The sides of the canyon died away, and after an hour's riding we found ourselves on fairly level ground. The horses picked their way easily through the chapparal; we rode, silently for the most part, in and out among the great pines when the creek led us in their direction. Our man-hunt was becoming very mild.

Morley, riding a little in the lead, stopped suddenly, dismounted and crouched down, rifle in hand. I followed, and obeying his silent signal, we walked softly through the bushes to the edge of the stream. My Englishman pointed to his quarry.

Standing in the shallow stream, stark naked in the morning sun, a man was performing his matutinal ablutions. It was about eight o'clock, and the water was evidently very cold, for the bather instinctively expanded his chest under the inspiring sting of the water which he was splashing upon it. In a moment he turned and faced us. It was the original of our photograph. Morley gave a soft whistle that bespoke an amplitude of inward delight.

of course to compel a man standing in the water without a stitch of clothing to throw up his hands seems in a way superfluous. Certain it is that the man instantly threw up his hands, and held them up, as high as they would go.

"Now, my good fellow, I'm going through your clothes," was Morley's next comment, and keeping his rifle pretty steadily pointed at the captive he stepped a few yards along the bank to where the man's clothes lay. The prisoner made a step toward the bank, but Morley turned sharply upon him, keeping him covered with his rifle. "I'd stand still if I were you, and hands up, you know."

The warning was effective, and the Englishman went carefully through the pockets of the man's clothes, extracting five or six silver dollars, a box of tobacco, a pipe, two knives, and to his great joy, a long and gruesome six-shooter, of the kind that Mr. Colt, or his successors in business, make with such beautiful precision. Morley slipped the gun in his own pocket, and rejoined me.

"Confound it," he whispered, "do you know, they never told us the fellow's name. How can you arrest a man without naming him? Stupid of us never to have asked the sheriff for his name."

I weakly suggested something about our needing a warrant. Morley was almost scornful. "Why, he's an escaped prisoner. One doesn't need a warrant. One can take him wherever one finds him. We'll give him an alias."

He pointed his rifle at the captive and said, very slowly and distinctly: "You there, alias John Doe, I arrest you in the name of the King-no, I mean in the name of President Roosevelt, or the name of the Governor of this State, and I call on you to lay down your arms and submit."

"Oh, I say: hands up, there."

I had read that phrase, many times, and often heard it quoted. Somehow it failed to strike me at the time as incongruous; yet

"Now, myman, we won't have any of that. Come on shore here and put on some of your clothes for decency's sake. You don't need much. When you've done that, you march along in front of us, and if you cut or run, I'll put a bullet through you as sure as I live. You can make any statement you want, but

you don't have to, and I warn you that any thing you say can be used against you. I think there's something of that sort in Magna Charta, or the Bill of Rights, and I understand it's in all your constitutions here; so you see I'm looking after your rights. Here are your clothes. Wait a bit, let me take another look at them."

Morley attacked the coat this time, and drew forth a couple of newspaper clippings, a pencil and a paper folded like a legal document. The latter was endorsed "Memorandum on the requisition of the Governor of Wyoming for the extradition of George Selvey, alias Peter Dowling, accused of bank robbery."

Morley handed me the paper with a look of triumph. "I wasn't worrying about the fellow's name, but this may come in if we should meet anyone and the man should attempt to escape.

"So you've been collecting the documents of your case, Selvey," he said, turning again to the prisoner. "Well, Selvey, alias Dowling, get some clothes on, and we'll go along."

I confess that I was not entirely satisfied with the situation. It was all very well to go through the form of arresting our man, but conveying him to the jail at North Star was a very different matter. If he were to resist, I certainly had no relish for using our rifles, and after all, these were our only points of superiority. It is one thing for two men to overpower a third; it is a very different thing for them to carry him against his will ten miles through the mountains.

On the other hand, from his point of view, why should he resist? We were armed, and he was not; and perhaps he would never guess that we had no mind for subduing him with bullets. Certainly Morley had given no indication of any qualms of that sort. The Englishman was apparently too intent on bagging his game to look on the taking other than as the capture of a cold-blooded criminal who should at no cost be allowed to escape.

In the meantime the prisoner was putting on his clothes. When he was fully dressed, it seemed to me that it was with great difficulty that he was keeping himself under control; once or twice he began speaking angrily but checked himself by an evident effort of will; plainly he was a good actor. He was apparently trying to throw us off our

guard. I think we both felt relieved that his Colt was safely in Morley's pocket.

This apparently studied repression of rage at his captors had mostly come about while he was dressing. When he was through he said to Morley very quietly and in a tone that was almost friendly:

"There seems to be some mistake here. You spoke to me a few minutes ago as Selvey. I am not Selvey, and as you don't seem to know who I am, I don't know what more I can say than that you have made an absurd mistake and that the sooner you leave the better. George Selvey is safe in jail at North Star, and if you want him you had better go there."

"That's the very worst thing you could have said," observed Morley judicially. "Twenty-four hours ago you were in jail, Selvey, and in another six hours you'll be there again. By the way, we happen to have your photograph here; I was going to get you to sign it as a souvenir, but I won't ask you to make evidence against yourself."

Morley drew from his pocket the picture the sheriff had given us, and displayed it to our captive with great triumph.

The outlaw was evidently disconcerted at this unwelcome evidence.

"Yes," he said, a little sullenly, "that's my photograph. Where you got it beats me, though I don't know as I much care. But you've got no right to take me. I'll just trouble you for the things you've been taking out of my clothes, and then I'll go my way and you'll go yours."

"You're quite right, Selvey," returned our amateur sheriff imperturbably, "and your way happens to be ours. You forget that you're under arrest. But I say, now, if you'll be decent about it, and go quietly along, and-if you'll tell us how you broke the jail and where you've been, why we'll make it decent and easy for you, and you can ride my horse part of the way. It doesn't really make any difference though, you know, whether you do or not, because we've got the guns, and the horses, and you can't get away, you know. And don't talk unless you want to, but anything you say can be used against you, as I told you before."

The fugitive, impressed by the double threatening of Morley's serious face and of his impassive rifle, laughed rather goodnaturedly, and stepped obediently in front. The sheriff had told us that the bank robber

was no ordinary thief, but a smooth and polished villain who would, we inferred, if it were possible, deceive the very elect. So it was with some misgiving that I observed that the man was adopting a distinctly conciliatory tone. Morley observed this too, and arranged the line of march so that there should be no possibility of escape. We bound the prisoner's arms behind him, not without a slight scuffle, and ordered him to march fifteen paces in front. I had indulged in much wonderment as to whether our captive would submit when it came to the pinch, or would put Morley's shooting abilities to the test. But the preliminary struggle over the tying of his hands dissipated all these doubts; and in fact a single look at the Englishman's stern face, and his quick movement for his rifle at a threatening gesture of the robber's, was quite convincing. Morley would have used his rifle without compunction, doubtless shooting promptly upon any attempt at escape, and our captive evidently realized this. My mental inquiries as to what we were going to do with our prisoner were, it appeared, purely academic. Morley was solving the problem with such prompt and masterful efficiency that I felt ashamed of having doubted our own power. It was all in the day's work for Morley, and with the glorious doggedness of his people he would himself have been shot to death rather than let the outlaw escape. Morley consciously represented for the moment the police force of the commonwealth; he had not seriously sought the painful post; but he was a guest of the community, and had been suddenly called into his host's service; not for the world would he have violated the laws of hospitality, nor the obligations of a courteous guest. The prisoner realized the situation, after the little affair with his hands, and made no further effort to escape.

In fact, once reconciled to the inevitable, the escaped robber took his capture goodnaturedly, and regaled us much on our journey to North Star. After a time Morley let him walk alongside instead of marching in front; but he was careful not to let his good-nature run away with him, so the man's hands remained bound. In this fashion we made leisurely progress across the bench and down along the foothills. In the distant plain we caught for a moment the band of heavy smoke that marked the VOL. XL.-69

railway that connects North Star with the main line. We should have been speeding by there the night before on our way to catch the Overland; but the day's delay had not been unwelcome, and it was something to remember all one's life to have captured a bandit, charming a companion as the bandit might be. It happens not infrequently that swindlers lavish upon their chosen craft a wealth of ingenuity that if applied to an honest calling would earn them a comfortable living; and Selvey, for all that he was a bank robber, and a mean one at that, displayed such a lively and good-natured interest in the country whose hospitality he had abused, such a familiarity with all the outlying regions, such a knowledge of conditions, that it seemed pathetic that he should not have turned his inquiring and assimilative mind to better uses. Morley tried to lead him gently into his own field, hoping to pick up some good yarns of crime; I think the honest Englishman was led by conflicting impulses; one, a host's polite solicitude to turn the conversation to subjects in which his guest was thoroughly at home; the other, an overweening care lest a prisoner should be entrapped into making a confession. I believe Morley would have had fears for the continued existence of the republic if a captive in the custody of the law had been led by the sanctity of hospitality, imprisonment though the hospitality might be, into giving evidence against himself.

But our man rattled on, spinning many tales of violence in days gone by, but none of his own. He told us of the long conflict between the sheepmen and the cattlemen, of Tom Horn in Wyoming, his various murders, and of how he had been led to confess; of Diamond Field Jack, his conviction and sentence to death, how the Governor had pardoned him and the storm that the pardon raised, and how afterward Jack had drifted to Nevada, married there, struck it rich in a mine and was now a mighty nabob. He told us of Hangman's Gulch, through which we had come the day before, and of the great days of '63, when the lights of the mining camps were blazing in the Basin all night long, and of how Jenny Lind had sung in the little wooden shack they call the opera house in Placer City in the days of forty years ago when Placer City had been a great and thriving metropolis.