Besieged

"You may give his Honor my compliments and tell
him that we are sorry not to see things his way, but
there are points involved in this business that he doesn't
know anything about, and we, unfortunately, have no
time to lay them before him."

The sheriff's seeming satisfaction with his position
on the wall and his disposition to parley had begun to
arouse my suspicions, and Larry several times exclaimed
impatiently at the absurdity of discussing my
affairs with a person whom he insisted on calling a constable,
to the sheriff's evident annoyance. The officer
now turned upon him.

"You, sir,-we've got our eye on you, and you'd better
come along peaceable. Laurance Donovan-the description
fits you to a 't'."

"You could buy a nice farm with that reward,
couldn't you-" began Larry, but at that moment Bates
ran toward us calling loudly.

"They're coming across the lake, sir," he reported,
and instantly the sheriff's head disappeared, and as we
ran toward the house we heard his horse pounding down
the road toward St. Agatha's.

"The law be damned. They don't intend to come in
here by the front door as a matter of law," said Larry.
"Pickering's merely using the sheriff to give respectability
to his manoeuvers for those notes and the rest
of it."

It was no time for a discussion of motives. We ran
across the meadow past the water tower and through the
wood down to the boat-house. Far out on the lake we
saw half a dozen men approaching the Glenarm grounds.
They advanced steadily over the light snow that lay upon
the ice, one man slightly in advance and evidently the
leader.