The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-08-01

justice. From the Durham County jail,
in Tennessee, where he had been con-
fined to await his trial, he had escaped
by knocking down his jailer with an
iron bar, robbing him of his keys and,
opening the outer door, walking out
into the night. The jailer being I'M
armed, Mannering got no weapon with
which to defend his recovered liberty.
As soon as he was out of the town,
he had the folly to enter forest;
this was many years ago, when that
region was wilder than it is now.
The night was pretty dark, with
neither moon nor stars visible, and as
Mannering had never dwelt thereabout.
and knew nothing of the lay of the
land. he was, naturally. not long in
losing himself. He could not have said
if he were getting farther away from
/ the town or going back to it-a most
! important matter to Orrin Mannering
He knew that in either case a posse
of citizens. with a pack of hloodhounds,
would soon be on his track and his
chance to escape was very slender; but
he did not wish to assist in his own
i pursuit. Even an added hour of free
dom was worth having
/ Suddenly he emerged from the forest
! into an old road, and there before him
i saw, indistinctly, the figure of a man,
motionless in the evidently
] posted there to intercept him. 1t was
! too late to retreat: the fugitive felt
| that at the first movement back to-
ward the wood he would be, as he af-
! terward explained, "flled with buck
/ shot, - So the two stood there like
trees, Mannering nearly suffocated by
/ the activity of his own heart; the other
the emotions of the other are not of
record
A moment later-it may have been
j an hour-the moon sailed into a patch
| of unclouded sky and the hunted man
+ saw that visible embodiment of Law
lift his arm and point significantly to-
ward and beyond him. He understood
! Turning his back to his captor, he walk
ed submissively away in the direction
/ indicated, looking to neither the right
nor the left; hardly daring to breathe,
his head and back actually aching with
a prophecy of buckshot.
! Mannering was as courageous a Grim
/ inal as ever lived to be hanged; that
was shown by the conditions of awful
! personal peril under which he had
/ coolly killed his brother-in-law It is
needless to relate them here; they came
out at his trial, and the revelation of
his calmness in confronting them came
near to saving his neck. But what
would you have?-when a brave man
is beaten, he submits to the inevitable
So they pursued their journey jail
! ward along the old road through the
woods Only once did Mannering ven
ture turn of the head: just once. when
he was in deep shadow and he knew
that the other was in moonlight. he
looked backward. His captor was John
/ Duff, the iailer, as white as death and
bearing upon his brow the livid mark
of the iron bar. Orrin Mannering had
no further curiosity.
Eventually they entered the town.
which was all alight. but deserted:
only the women and children remained.
and they were off the streets. Straight
toward the jail the criminal held his
way. Straight up to the main entrance
he walked. laid his hand upon the knob
Of the heavy iron door, pushed it open
without command. entered and found
himself in the presence of half dozen
armed men. Then he turned Nobody
else had entered
On a table in the corridor lay the
dead body of John Duff