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The Colonel was struck with the strong logic of this position. He strode
up and down, and thought it painfully over. Finally he said:
"There's reason in it; yes, there's reason in it. And so, although it
seems a piteous thing to sweat this poor ancient devil for a burglary he
hadn't the least hand in, still if duty commands I suppose we must give
him up to the authorities."
"I would," said Hawkins, cheered and relieved, "I'd give him up if he was
a thousand ancestors compacted into one."
"Lord bless me, that's just what he is," said Sellers, with something
like a groan, "it's exactly what he is; there's a contribution in him
from every ancestor he ever had. In him there's atoms of priests,
soldiers, crusaders, poets, and sweet and gracious women--all kinds and
conditions of folk who trod this earth in old, old centuries, and
vanished out of it ages ago, and now by act of ours they are summoned
from their holy peace to answer for gutting a one-horse bank away out on
the borders of Cherokee Strip, and it's just a howling outrage!"
"
Oh, don't talk like that, Colonel; it takes the heart all out of me, and
makes me ashamed of the part I am proposing to--"
"
"
Wait--I've got it!"
A saving hope? Shout it out, I am perishing."
209
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