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 young fellow, and that's all the good it will do you. We'll hang you first and then talk about it after."

Vainly Halsey insisted that he had not been a spy and that he had his uniform on and that he should be tried by court martial. His two captors only laughed at him while their preparations for stringing him up went steadily forward. One of them returned to the cedars and brought back a twenty-foot rope which he threw over the limb of the old ash, the same limb that Halsey's swing had been tied to when he was a boy. Was he about to swing on this familiar limb for the last time?

He thought of calling for help but that seemed childish. He was a soldier and he would die like one if he had to. The man named Bill caught the loose end of the rope which had been thrown over the limb and was about to pull on it with all his weight, when something happened which was not on the program. There were two quick shots, so close together that they gave but one echo. The hand on the rope dropped