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Rh would never pass again. Along the summit of the wall a blue-clad man was pacing slowly, sharply silhouetted; he held in his right hand a rifle, carrying it loosely, like a hunter. The garotter leaned and grinned into the murderer’s face.

“You’ll wish they’d handed you the book and you’d been hung,” he snarled; “you’ll wish that more’n once before ye’ve croaked in this mill!” But the other did not seem to hear. Collins, though there was little softness in his heart, felt an uneasiness at the creaking cruelty of the words. His eyes went up and away across the enclosure to a high stone building with top-floor windows heavily barred.

“Them’s the condemned cells up there on top,” went on the garotter, noting the direction of Collins’s glance—and then, to the murderer: “You’ll live there, pal.”

But the murderer still stared at the stretch of high stone wall, with its pacing guard holding his gun loosely, like a hunter.

A man was coming toward them, across the Rh