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Rh come back and see that you've got all that—that stuff off'n your face and hands."

Jud obeyed, and presently reappeared in a ragged outfit, his face and hands red from scrubbing.

"I guess maybe it's all right," declared the old man. "Only, they's risks in it. Know what's apt to happen if they was to find that you'd helped to get a outlaw off free?"

"What would it be?" asked the boy.

"Oh, nothin' much. Maybe they'd try you and maybe they wouldn't. Anyways, they'd sure wind up by hangin' you by the neck till you was as dead as the speckled rooster."

"The Plymouth Rock," insisted Jud hotly.

"All right, I don't argue none. But you just done a dangerous thing, Jud. And there'll be a consid'able pile of men here in the mornin', most like, to ask you how and why."

He was astonished to hear Jud break into a careless gale of laughter.

"Hush up," said Pop. "You'll be wakin' him up with all that noise. Besides, what d'you mean by laughin' at the law?"

"Why, granddad," said Jud, "don't I know you wouldn't never let no posse take me from you? Don't I know maybe you'd clean 'em all up?"

"Pshaw!" said Pop, and flushed with delight. "You was always a fool kid, Jud. Now you run along to bed."

It was a gloomy hour, always, with Jud, and now he regarded his grandfather with a wistful eye.

"Maybe," he suggested in the face of the other's frown, "I'd better stay up—in case the posse should come to-night?"