shed and gave her the next day's dinner which he had brought with him that morning in case there should be a dance to keep him over-night. Then he took a long, deep breath of the icy air and passed into the court-house.
Inside, the atmosphere seemed suffocating. The room was so crowded that he did not find Myra's face anywhere. The sheriff was among the dancers, but the fiddles were winding up the set with a last prolonged squeak.
As the scraping ceased, Rankin stood before the sheriff. In the sudden pause of sound and motion his voice sounded distinctly throughout the room.
"I have just killed Dennis Rumpety," he said.
For ten seconds there was absolute silence; then a rough voice growled, "Thunder! But you done a good job!"
Upon that everybody began talking at once, and in the midst of the clamor Ed Rankin, the man who loved freedom better than life, was formally placed under arrest.
His trial came off the next day but one. The coroner's inquest had shown death by apoplexy, caused probably by a paroxysm of rage. The jury rendered a verdict of "involuntary manslaughter." The sentence was the
