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216 fog of smoke, saw Seth Salter's one eye glaring at him over the barrel of a revolver which was swaying to and fro about a foot or so from the floor.

Then he remembered that his Smith-Wesson had only five chambers. Salter's Colt probably had six. He saw the flame leap from the muzzle, and at the same instant Salter's head dropped with a thump on the floor. A red-hot knife seemed to pierce his shoulder, and then he dropped as well, just too soon to hear angry shouts and the stamping of horses' hoofs outside.

The Free State police didn't mind winking, for satisfactory considerations, at I.D.B., or even at a peaceable form of robbery under arms, but they had neither the stomach nor the heart for a share of blood-guiltiness, and so, when one of the inspector's traitors dropped a hint as to the real purpose for which he had been taken to the hut, their