Mighta spilled it--shame!" Jack looked back, his heart thumping heavily at sound of the voice, thick though it was and maudlin.

Dade drunk and full of coarse foolery was a sight he had never before looked upon; but Dade's presence, drunk or sober, made his own plight seem a shade less hopeless.

He did not dare a second glance, with Davis and the Captain walking at either stirrup; but he listened anxiously--listened and caught a drunken mumble from the rear, and a chorus of chuckling laughs coming after.
He looked ahead.

The great oak was close, so close that he might have counted the narrow little ridges of red soil beneath; the ridges which he knew were the graves of those who had died before him.

The great bough that reached out over the spot where the earth was trampled smooth in horrible significance--the branch from which a noosed rope dangled sinuously in the breeze that came straight off the ocean--swayed with majestic deliberation as if Fate herself were beckoning.
He clasped his hands upon the saddle-horn and, stealthily loosening the dagger-point from the hem of his sleeve, slid the weapon cautiously into his hand.