Silence fell again upon the little group of men. They did not look at Jeffrey. They had heard but one shot. The shot from the woods had been too muffled for them to hear.
Again Stocking broke the silence.
“What difference does it make,” he said. “Any of us would have done it if we could.”
“But I didn’t! I tell you I didn’t,” shouted 135 Jeffrey. “The shot from the woods got ahead of me. That man was facing me. He was shot from behind!”
Old Erskine Beasley took command.
“What difference does it make, as Stocking says. We’ve got live men and women and children to think about to-day,” he said. “Straighten him out decent. Then divide and go around the fire both ways. The alarm can’t travel half fast enough for this breeze, and it’s rising, too,” he added.
“But I tell you––!” Jeffrey began again. Then he saw how useless it was.
He looked up the hill and saw his horse, which even in the face of this unheard-of terror had preferred to venture back toward his master.
He caught the horse, mounted, and started to ride south with the party that was to try to get around the fire from that side.
He rode with them. They were his friends. But he was not with them. There was a circle drawn around him. He was separated from them. They probably did not feel it, but he felt it. It is a circle which draws itself ever around a man who, justly or unjustly, is thought guilty of blood. Men may applaud his deed. Men may say that they themselves would wish to have done it. But the circle is there.