"Your father was here last evening, Marsh," Evelyn said at length, remembering she had not seen him the night before, and that he had breakfasted and gone before she was up that morning.

"What did he come for?" her husband asked.

"I think to see you. Poor man, he doesn't seem able to get the run of the hours you keep; I told him he could always find you here between four and eight in the morning. I must say this little insight into your domestic habits appeared to distress him, but I tried to comfort him,—I told him you would probably outlive us all." She laughed softly. "Andy was here this afternoon, Marsh," she went on.

"What the devil did he want?"

"I don't know."

"Is he coming back?"

"He didn't mention it, if he is." And again she laughed.

Langham moved impatiently; her low full-throated mirth jarred on his somber mood.

"Were you in court to-day, Marsh?" she inquired, after a short silence.

"Yes," he answered briefly.

"Were there many there?"

"Yes."

"Any ladies, Marsh?" she questioned, with sudden eagerness.

"If you can call them that," he growled.

"Do you know, Marsh, I had a strong impulse to go, too. Would you have been astonished to see me there?" she asked tentatively.

"We won't have any of that,—do you understand?" he said with fierce authority.

"Why not? It's as right for me as it is for any one else, isn't it?"

"I won't have it!" he said, lifting his voice slightly.

She had risen and now stood leaning against the arm of his chair.

"Marsh, he didn't kill McBride; he couldn't,—he wouldn't harm a mouse!"

Her words set him raging.

"Keep quiet, will you,—what do you know about it, anyhow?" he cried with sullen ferocity.

"Don't be rude, Marsh! So you don't want me to come to the trial,—you tell me I can't?"

"Did my father say anything about this matter,—the trial, I mean?" asked Langham haltingly.

"Yes, I think he spoke of it, but I really wasn't interested because you see I am so sure John North is innocent!"

He caught one of her hands in his and drew her down on the arm of his chair where he could look into her eyes.

"There is just one question I want to ask you, Evelyn, but I expect you'll answer it as you choose," he said, with his face close to hers.

"Then why ask it?" she said.

"Why,—because I want to know. Where were you on the day of the murder,—between five and six o'clock?"

"I wish you'd let me go, Marsh; you're hurting me—" she complained.

She struggled for a moment to release herself from his grasp, then realizing that her effort was of no avail, she quietly resumed her former position on the arm of his chair.

"You must answer my question, come—where were you?" Langham commanded.

He brought his face close to hers and she saw that his eyes burnt with an unhealthy light.

"How silly of you, Marsh, you know it was Thanksgiving day,—that we dined with your father."

"I am not asking you about that,—that was later!"

"I suppose I was on my way there at the hour you mention."

"No, you weren't; you were in North's rooms!"

"If you were not drunk, I should be angry with you, Marsh,—you are insulting—"

He quitted his hold on her and staggered to his feet.

"You were with North—" he roared.

"Do you want the servants to hear you?" she asked in an angry whisper.

"Hell!"

He made a step toward her, his hand raised.

"Don't do that, Marsh. I should never forgive you!"

Evelyn faced him, meeting his wild glance with unshaken composure. The clenched hand fell at his side.

"My God, I ought to kill you!" he muttered.

She made him no answer, but kept her eyes fixed steadily on his face.

"You were with North!" Langham repeated.

"Well, since you wish me to say it, I was with John North, but what of that?"

"In his rooms—" he jerked out.

"No,—now you are asking too much of me!"

"I have proof,—proof, that you went to his rooms that day!" he stormed.

"I did nothing of the sort, and I am not going to quarrel with you while you are drunk!"

Drunk he was, but not as she understood drunkenness. In the terrible extremity to which his crime had brought him he was having recourse to drugs.

"You say you have proof,—don't be absurd, Marsh, you know you haven't!" she added uneasily.

"You were with North in his rooms—" he insisted.

He was conscious of a strange wonder at himself that he could believe this, and yet aside from such gusts of rage as these, his doubt of her made no difference in their life together. Surely this was the measure of his degradation.

"I am not going to discuss this matter with you!" Evelyn said.

"Aren't you? Well, I guess you will. Do you know you may be summoned into court?"

"Why?" she demanded, with a nervous start.

"North may want to prove that he was in his rooms at the hour the murder is supposed to have been committed; all he needs is your testimony,—it would make a nice scandal, wouldn't it?"

"Has he asked this?" Evelyn questioned.

"Not yet!"

"Then I don't think he ever will," she said quietly.

"Do you suppose he will be fool enough to go to the penitentiary, or hang, to save your reputation?" Langham asked harshly.

"I think Jack North would be almost fool enough for that," she answered with conviction.

"Well, I don't,—you were too easy,—men don't risk their necks for your sort!" he mocked. "Look here, you had an infatuation for North,—you admitted it,—only this time it went too far! What was the trouble, did he get sick of the business and throw you over?"

"How coarse you are, Marsh!" and she colored angrily, not at his words, however, but at the memory of that last meeting with North.

"It's a damn rotten business, and I'll call it by what name I please! If you are summoned, it will be your word against his; you have told me you were not in his rooms—"

"I was not there—" she said, and as she said it she wondered why she did not tell the truth, admit the whole thing and have it over with. She was tired of the wrangling, and her hatred of North had given way to pity, yet when Langham replied:

"All right. You are my wife, and North can hang, but he shan't save himself by ruining you if I can help it!"

She answered: "I have told you that I wasn't there, Marsh."

"Would you swear that you weren't there?" Langham asked eagerly.

"Yes—"

"Even if it sent him to the penitentiary?" he persisted.

"Yes."

He took her by the shoulders and drew her near to him that he might look deep into her eyes.

"Even if it hanged him?" he rasped out.

She felt his hot breath on her cheek; she looked into his face, fierce, cruel, with the insane selfishness of his one great fear.

"Answer me,—would you let him hang?" and he shook her roughly.

"Would I let him hang—" she repeated.

"Yes—"

"I—I don't know!" she said in a frightened whisper.

"No, damn you, I can't trust you!" and he flung her from him.

There was a brief silence. The intangible, unformed, unthoughtout fear that had kept her silent was crystallizing into a very tangible conviction. Marshall had expressed more than the mere desire to be revenged on North, she saw that he was swayed by the mastering emotion of fear, rather than by his blazing hate of the suspected man. Slowly but surely there came to her an understanding of his swift descent during the last months.

"Marsh—" she began, and hesitated.

A scarcely articulate snarl from Langham seemed to encourage her to go on.

"Marsh, where does the money come from that you—that we—have been spending so lavishly this winter?"

"From my practice," he said, but his face was averted.

She gave a frightened laugh.

"Oh, no, Marsh, I know better than that!"

He swung about on her.

"Well," he stormed, "what do you know?"

"Hush, Marsh!" she implored, in sudden terror of him.

He gave her a sullen glare.

"Oh, very well, bring the whole damn thing rattling down about our ears!" he cried.

"Marsh,—what do you mean? Do you know that John North is innocent?" She spoke with terrifying deliberation.

For a moment they stood staring into each other's eyes. The delicate pallor deepened on her face, and she sank half fainting into a chair, but her accusing gaze was still fixed on Langham.

He strode to her side, and his hand gripped hers with a cruel force.

"Let him prove that he is innocent if he can, but without help from you! You keep still no matter what happens, do you hear? Or God knows where this thing will end—or how!"

"Marsh, what am I to think!"

"You can think what you like so long as you keep still—"

There was a hesitating step in the hall, the door was pushed open, and Judge Langham paused on the threshold.

"May I come in?" he said.

Neither spoke, and his uneasy glance shifted back and forth from husband to wife. In that wordless instant their common knowledge manifested itself to each one of the three.



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

GOOD MEN AND TRUE

The North trial was Mount Hope's one vital sensation. Day after day the courtroom was filled with eager perspiring humanity, while in their homes, on the streets, and in the stores men talked of little else. As for North himself, he was conscious of a curious sense of long acquaintance with the courtroom; its staring white walls and crowded benches seemed his accustomed surroundings, and here, with a feeling that was something between fear and weariness, he followed each stage of the elaborate game Judge Belknap, for the defense, and Moxlow, for the prosecution, were playing, the game that had his life for its stake.

When court adjourned, always in the twilight of those mid-winter afternoons, there were his brief comforting interviews with Elizabeth; and then the long solitary evenings in his cell; and the longer nights, restless and disturbed. The strain told fearfully on his vigor of body and mind, his face under imprisonment's pallid mask, became gaunt and heavily lined, while his eyes sunk deep in their sockets.

At first he had not believed that an innocent man could be punished for a crime of which he had no knowledge; he was not so sure of this now, for the days slipped past and the prosecution remained firmly intrenched behind certain facts which were in their way, conclusive. He told himself with grim humor that the single weak strand in the rope Moxlow was seeking to fit about his neck was this, that after all was said and proved, the fact remained, he had not killed Archibald McBride!

When the last witness for the state had been examined, North took the stand in his own behalf. His cross-examination was concluded one dull February day, and there came a brief halt in the rapid progress of the trial; the jury was sent from the room while Moxlow and Belknap prepared instructions and submitted them to the court. The judge listened wearily, his sunken cheek resting against the palm of his thin hand, and his gaze fixed on vacancy; when he spoke his voice was scarcely audible. Once he paused in the middle of a sentence as his glance fell on the heavy upturned face of his son, for he saw fear and entreaty written on the close-drawn lips and in the bloodshot eyes.

A little later in the twilight North, with the sheriff at his elbow, walked down the long corridor on his way to the jail. The end was close at hand, a day or two more and his fate would be decided. The hopelessness of the situation appalled him, stupified him. The evidence of his guilt seemed overwhelming; he wondered how Elizabeth retained her faith in him. He always came back to his thought of her, and that which had once been his greatest joy now only filled him with despair. Why had he ever spoken of his love,—what if this grim farce in which he was a hapless actor blundered on to a tragic close! He would have made any sacrifice had it been possible for him to face the situation alone, but another life was bound up with him; he would drag her down in the ruin that had overtaken him, and when it was all past and forgotten, she would remember,—the horror of it would fill her days!

On that night, as on many another, North retraced step by step the ugly path that wound its tortuous way from McBride's back office to the cell in which he—John North—faced the gallows. But the oftener he trod this path the more maze-like it became, until now he was hopelessly lost in its intricacies; discouraged, dazed, confused, almost convinced that in some blank moment of lost identity it was his hand that had sent the old man on his long last journey. As Evelyn Langham had questioned, so now did John North: "If not I, then who did murder Archibald McBride?"

In a vain search for the missing handy-man, General Herbert had opened his purse wider than North or even Evelyn realized. There seemed three possibilities in the instance of Montgomery. Either he knew McBride's murderer and testified falsely to shield him; or else he knew nothing and had been hired by some unknown enemy to swear North into the penitentiary; or—and the third possibility seemed not unlikely—it was he himself that had clambered over the shed roof after killing and robbing the old merchant.

North turned on his cot and his thoughts turned with him from Montgomery to Gilmore, who also, with uncharacteristic cowardliness had fled the scene of his illegal activities and the indictment that threatened him anew. "What was the gambler's part in the tragedy?" He hated North; he loved Marshall Langham's wife. But neither of these passions shaped themselves into murderous motives. Langham himself furnished food for reflection and speculation. Evidently in the most dire financial difficulties; evidently under Gilmore's domination; evidently burdened with some guilty knowledge,—but there was no evidence against him, he had credibly accounted for himself on that Thanksgiving afternoon, and North for the hundredth time dismissed him with the exclamation: "Marsh Langham a murderer? Impossible!"

The first cold rays of light, announcing the belated winter's dawn, touched with gray fingers the still grayer face of the sleepless prisoner. Out of the shadows that they coined came a vision of Evelyn Langham. And again for the hundredth time, North was torn between the belief that she, by her testimony, might save him and the unconquerable determination to keep from Elizabeth Herbert the knowledge of his affair with Langham's wife. Better end his worthless existence than touch her fair life with this scandal. But of what was Evelyn Langham thinking during the days of his trial? What if she should voluntarily break her silence! Should he not send for her—there was a sound at his door. North started to his feet only to see the fat round face of the deputy sheriff as he came bringing the morning's hot coffee and thick buttered bread.

The town bell was ringing for nine o'clock when the deputy sheriff again appeared to escort him into court, and as they entered the room North saw that it was packed to the doors. His appearance won a moment of oppressive silence, then came the shuffling of feet and the hum of whispered conversation.

At the back of the room sat Marshall Langham. He was huddled up in a splint-bottomed chair a deputy had placed for him at one end of the last row of benches. Absorbed and aloof, he spoke with no one, he rarely moved except to mop his face with his handkerchief. His eyes were fixed on the pale shrunken figure that bent above the judge's desk. His father's face with its weary dignity, its unsoftened pride, possessed a terrible fascination for him; the very memory of it, when he had quitted the court room, haunted him! Pallid, bloodless as a bit of yellow parchment, and tortured by suffering, it stole into his dreams at night.

But at last the end was in sight! If Moxlow had the brains he credited him with, North would be convicted, the law satisfied, and his case cease to be of vital interest to any one. Then of a sudden his fears would go from him, he would be born afresh into a heritage of new hopes and new aspirations! He had suffered to the very limit of his capacity; there was such a thing as expiation, and surely he had expiated his crime.

Now Moxlow, lank and awkward, with long black locks sweeping the collar of his rusty coat, slipped from his chair and stood before the judge's desk. For an instant Langham's glance shifted from his father to the accused man. He felt intense hatred of him; to his warped and twisted consciousness, half mad as he was with drink and drugs, North's life seemed the one thing that stood between himself and safety,—and clearly North had forfeited the right to live!

When Moxlow's even tones fell on the expectant hush, Langham writhed in his seat. Each word, he felt, had a dreadful significance; the big linen handkerchief went back and forth across his face as he sought to mop away the sweat that oozed from every pore. He had gone as deep in the prosecutor's counsels as he dared go, he knew the man's power of invective, and his sledge-hammer force in argument; he wanted him to cut loose and overwhelm North all in a breath! The blood in him leaped and tingled with suppressed excitement, his twitching lips shaped themselves with Moxlow's words. He felt that Moxlow was letting his opportunity pass him by, that after all he was not equal to the task before him, that it was one thing to plan and quite another to perform. Men, such as those jurors, must be powerfully moved or they would shrink from a verdict of guilty!

But Moxlow persevered in his level tones, he was not to be hurried. He felt the case as good as won, and there was the taste of triumph in his mouth, for he was going to convict his man in spite of the best criminal lawyer in the state! Yet presently the level tones became more and more incisive, and Moxlow would walk toward North, his long finger extended, to loose a perfect storm of words that cut and stung and insulted. He went deep into North's past, and stripped him bare; shabby, mean, and profligate, he pictured those few short years of his manhood until he became the broken spendthrift, desperately in need of money and rendered daring by the ruin that had overtaken him.

Moxlow's speech lasted three hours, and when he ended a burning mist was before North's eyes. He saw vaguely the tall figure of the prosecuting attorney sink into a chair, and he gave a great sigh of relief. Perhaps North expected Belknap to perform some miracle of vindication in his behalf, certainly when his counsel advanced to the rail that guarded the bench there were both authority and confidence in his manner, and soon the dingy court room was echoing to the strident tones of the old criminal lawyer's voice. As the minutes passed, however, it became a certainty with North that no miracle would happen.

Belknap concluded his plea shortly before six o'clock. And this was the end,—this was the last move in the game where his life was the stake! In spite of his exhaustion of mind and body North had followed the speech with the closest attention. He told himself now, that the state's case was unshaken, that the facts, stubborn and damning, were not to be brushed aside.

Moxlow's answer to Belknap's plea was brief, occupying little more than half an hour, and the trial was ended. It rested with the jury 'to say whether John North was innocent or guilty. As the jury filed from the room North realized this with a feeling of relief in that that at last the miserable ordeal was over. He had never been quite bereft of hope, the consciousness of his own innocence had measurably sustained him in his darkest hours. And now once more his imagination swept him beyond the present into the future; again he could believe that he was to pass from that room a free man to take his place in the world from which he had these many weary months been excluded. There was no bitterness in his heart toward any one, even Moxlow's harsh denunciation of him was forgotten; the law through its bungling agents had laid its savage hands on him, that was all, and these agents had merely done what they conceived to be their duty.

He glanced toward the big clock on the wall above the judge's desk and saw that thirty minutes had already gone by since the jury retired. Another half-hour passed while he studied the face of the clock, but the door of the jury room, near which Deputy-sheriff Brockett had taken up his station, still remained closed and no sound came from beyond it. At his back he heard one man whisper to another that the jurymen's dinner had just been brought in from the hotel.

"That means another three quarters of an hour,—it's their last chance to get a square meal at the county's expense!" the speaker added, which earned him a neighboring ripple of laughter.

Judge Langham and Moxlow had withdrawn to the former's private room. Sheriff Conklin touched North on the shoulder.

"I guess we'd better go back, John!" he said. "If they want us to-night they can send for us."

Morbid and determined, the spectators settled down to wait for the verdict. The buzz of conversation was on every hand, and the air grew thick and heavy with tobacco smoke, while relaxed and at ease the crowd with its many pairs of eyes kept eager watch on the door before which Brockett kept guard. No man in the room was wholly unaffected by the sinister significance of the deputy's presence there, and the fat little man with his shiny bald head and stubby gray mustache, silent, preoccupied, taking no part in what was passing about him, became as the figure of fate.

The clock on the wall back of the judges desk ticked off the seconds; now it made itself heard in the hush that stole over the room, again its message was lost in the confusion of sounds, the scraping of feet or the hum of idle talk. But whether the crowd was silent or noisy the clock performed its appointed task until its big gilt hands told whoever cared to look that the jury in the John North case had devoted three hours to its verdict and its dinner.

The atmosphere of the place had become more and more oppressive. Men nodded sleepily in their chairs, conversation had almost ceased, when suddenly and without any apparent reason Brockett swung about on his heel and faced the locked door. His whole expression betokened a feverish interest. The effect of this was immediate. A wave of suppressed excitement passed over the crowd; absolute silence followed; and then from beyond the door, and distinctly audible in the stillness, came the sound of a quick step on the uncarpeted floor. The clock ticked twice, then a hand dealt the door a measured blow.

The moment of silence that followed this ominous signal was only broken when a deputy who had been nodding half asleep in his chair, sprang erect and hurried from the room. As the swinging baize doors banged at his heels, the crowd seemed to breathe again.

Moxlow was the first to arrive. The deputy had found him munching a sandwich on the court-house steps. His entrance was unhurried and his manner quietly confident; he put aside his well-worn overcoat and took his seat at the counsel table. A little ripple of respectful comment had greeted his appearance; this died away when the baize doors at the back of the room swung open again to admit North and the sheriff.

North's face was white, but he wore a look of high courage. He understood to the full the dreadful hazard of the next few moments. With never a glance to the right or to the left, he crossed the room and took his seat; as he settled himself in his chair, Belknap hurried into court.

Judge Langham had not yet appeared, and the crowd focused its attention on the shut door leading into his private office. Presently this door was seen to open slowly, and the judge's spare erect figure paused on the threshold. His eyes, sunken, yet brilliant with a strange light, shifted from side to side as he glanced over the room.

Marshall Langham had not quitted his seat. There in his remote corner under the gallery, his blanched face framed by shadows, his father's glance found him. With his hand resting tremulously on the jamb of the door as if to steady himself, the judge advanced a step. Once more his eyes strayed in the direction of his son, and from the gloom of that dull corner which Marshall had made his own, despair and terror called aloud to him. His shaking hand dropped to his side, and then like some pale ghost, he passed slowly before the eager eyes that were following his every movement to his place behind the flat-topped desk on the raised dais.

As he sank into his chair he turned to the clerk of the court and there was a movement of his thin lips, but no sound passed them. Brockett guessed the order he had wished to give, and the big key slid around in the old-fashioned lock of the jury-room door. Heavy-visaged and hesitating, the twelve men filed into court, and at sight of them John North's heart seemed to die within his breast. He no longer hoped nor doubted, he knew their verdict,—he was caught in some intricate web of circumstance! A monstrous injustice was about to be done him, and in the very name of justice itself!

The jurors, awkward in their self-consciousness, crossed the room and, as intangible as it was potent, a wave of horror went with them. There was a noisy scraping of chairs as they took their seats, and then a deathlike silence.

The clerk glanced up inquiringly into the white face that was bent on him. A scarcely perceptible inclination of the head answered him, and he turned to the jury.

"Gentlemen, have you arrived at a true verdict, and chosen one of your number to speak for you?" he asked.

Martin Howe, the first man in the front row of the two solemn lines of jurors, came awkwardly to his feet and said almost in a whisper:

"We have. We find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment."

"Mr. Howe, do you find this man guilty as charged in the indictment?" asked the clerk.

"I do," responded the juror.

Twelve times the clerk of the court, calling each man by name, asked this question, and one by one the jurors stood up and answered:

"I do."



CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE LAST APPEAL

One raw morning late in April, Mark Leanard, who worked at Kirby's lumber-yard, drove his team of big grade Percherons up to Kirby's office by the railroad tracks.

"What's doing?" he asked of Kirby's clerk.

The clerk handed him a slip of paper.

"Go round and tell Mitchell to get you out this load!" he said.

Leanard went off whistling, with the order slip tucked back of his hatband. In the yard, Mitchell the foreman, gave him a load "of sixteen-foot" pine boards and "two by fours".

"Where to?" the driver asked, as he took his seat on top the load.

"To the jail, they're going to fence the yard."

"You mean young John North?"

"That's what,—did you think you'd get a day off and take the old woman and the kids?" asked Mitchell.

It was a little past eight when the teamster entered the alley back of the jail and began to unload. The fall of the first heavy plank took John North to his cell window. For a long breathless moment he stood there peering down into the alley, then he turned away.

All that day the teams from Kirby's continued to bring lumber for the fence, and at intervals North heard the thud of the heavy planks as they were thrown from the wagons, or the voices of the drivers as they urged their horses up the steep grade from the street. Darkness came at last and with it unbroken quiet, but in his troubled slumbers that night the condemned man saw the teams come and go, and heard the fall of the planks. It was only when the dawn's first uncertain light stole into the cell that a dreamless sleep gave him complete forgetfulness.

From this he was presently roused by hearing the sound of voices in the yard, and then the sharp ringing blows of a hammer. He quitted his bed and slipped to the window; two carpenters had already begun building the frame work that was to carry the temporary fence which would inclose the place of execution. It was his fence; it would surround his gallows that his death should not become a public spectacle.

As they went about their task, the two carpenters stole covert glances up in the direction of his window, but North stood well back in the gloom of his cell and was unseen. Horror could add nothing to the prison pallor, which had driven every particle of color from his cheeks. Out of these commonplace details was to come the final tragedy. Those men in faded overalls were preparing for his death,—a limit had been fixed to the very hours that he might live. On the morning of the tenth of June he would see earth and sky from that window for the last time!

Chance passers-by with no very urgent affairs of their own on hand, drifted up from the street, and soon a little group had assembled in the alley to watch the two carpenters at their work, or to stare up at North's strongly barred window. Now and again a man would point out this window to some new-corner not so well informed as himself.

Whenever North looked down into the alley that morning, there was the human grouping with its changing personnel. Men sprawled on the piles of boards, or lounged about the yard, while the murmur of their idle talk reached him in his cell. The visible excuse which served to bring them there was commonplace enough, but it was invested with the interest of a coming tragedy, and North's own thoughts went forward to the time when the fence should be finished, when somewhere within the space it inclosed would stand his gallows.

Shortly before the noon whistles blew, two little girls came into the alley with the carpenters' dinner pails. They made their way timidly through the crowd, casting shy glances to the right and left; at a word from one of the men they placed the dinner pails beside the pile of lumber and hurried away; but at the street corner they paused, and with wide eyes stared up in the direction of North's window.

A moment later the whistles sounded and the idlers dispersed, while the two mechanics threw down their hammers and took possession of the lumber pile. After they had eaten, they lighted their pipes and smoked in silent contentment; but before their pipes were finished the crowd began to reassemble, and all that afternoon the shifting changing groups stood about in the alley, watching the building of the fence. At no time were the two carpenters without an audience. This continued from day to day until the structure was completed, then for a week there was no work done within the inclosure. It remained empty and deserted, with its litter of chips, of blocks and of board ends.

On the morning of the first Monday in May, North was standing before his window when the two mechanics entered the yard from the jail; they brought tools, and one carried a roll of blue paper under his arm; this he spread out on a board and both men examined it carefully. Next they crossed to the lumber pile and looked it over. They were evidently making some sort of calculation. Then they pulled on their overalls and went to work, and in one corner of the yard—the corner opposite North's window—they began to build his scaffold. The thing took shape before his very eyes, a monstrous anachronism.

General Herbert had not been idle while the unhurried preparations for John North's execution were going forward; whatever his secret feeling was, neither his words nor his manner conceded defeat. Belknap had tried every expedient known to criminal practice to secure a new trial but had failed, and it was now evident that without the intervention of the governor, North's doom was fixed unalterably. Belknap quitted Mount Hope for Columbus, and there followed daily letters and almost hourly telegrams, but General Herbert felt from the first that the lawyer was not sanguine of success. Then on the eighth of June, two days before the execution, came a long message from the lawyer. His wife was ill, her recovery was doubtful; the governor was fully possessed of the facts in North's case and was considering them, would the general come at once to Columbus?

This telegram reached Idle Hour late at night, and the next morning father and daughter were driven into Mount Hope. The pleasant life with its agreeable ordering which the general had known for ten peaceful years had resolved itself into a mad race with time. The fearful, the monstrous, seemed to reach out and grip him with skeleton fingers. Like the pale silent girl at his side, he was knowing the horror of death, and a horror that was beyond death.

They stopped at the jail to say good-by to North, and were then driven rapidly to the station. The journey of about two hours seemed interminable, but they rarely spoke. Elizabeth did not change the position she had assumed when they took their seats. She leaned lightly against her father's broad shoulder and her hands were clasped in her lap.

For weeks the situation had been absolutely pitiless. Their wrecked efforts were at the door of every hope, and if this mission failed—but it would not fail! All they had come to ask was the life of an innocent man, and surely the governor, unaffected by local prejudice, must realize John North's innocence.

It was two o'clock when they reached their destination, and as they left the car the general said:

"We will go to the hotel first. Either Judge Belknap will be there, or there will be some word for us."

At the hotel they found, not Belknap, but a letter which he had left. The governor was suffering from a slight indisposition and was confined to the house. Belknap had made an appointment for him, and he would be expected. The general crushed the sheet of paper between his fingers with weary impatience.

"We'll see the governor at once. I'll call a carriage," he said briefly.

Five minutes later, when they had left the hotel, Elizabeth asked:

"What did Judge Belknap say?"

"Nothing, dear, nothing—the matter remains just as it was. The governor is expecting us."

"What do you think, father? This is our last hope. Oh, do you realize that?"

She rested her hand on his arm.

"It's going to be all right!" her father assured her.

Then there was silence between them until they drew up before the governor's house.

Side by side they mounted the steps. The general's ring was answered by a man-servant, who took their cards after showing them into a small reception-room. He returned after a moment to say that the governor was occupied and could not possibly see them until the afternoon. The general's face was blank. He had never considered it possible that the governor would refuse to see him at his convenience. Certainly there had been a time when no politician of his party in the state nor in the nation would have ventured this; but it was evident the last ten years had made a difference in his position. Elizabeth gazed up fearfully into her father's face. What did this mean; was it merely a subterfuge on the governor's part to avoid a painful interview? Perhaps, after all, it would have been better had she remained at the hotel. Her father read her thoughts.

"It's all right—be brave!" he whispered. He turned to the servant. "Will you kindly learn for me at what hour the governor will be at liberty?" he said stiffly.

"Oh, he must see us!" cried Elizabeth, the moment they were alone.

"Of course he must, and he will," the general said.

But the governor's refusal to see them at once rankled within him. His sunburnt cheeks were a brick red and there was an angry light in his gray eyes. The servant did not return, but in his stead came a dapper young fellow, the governor's private secretary.

"General Herbert?" he asked inquiringly, as he entered the room.

The general acknowledged his identity by an inclination of the head.

"The governor will be most happy to see you at any time after three o'clock. May I tell him you will call then?" asked the secretary, and he glanced, not without sympathy and understanding, at Elizabeth.

"We will return at three," the general said.

"He regrets his inability to see you now," murmured the secretary, and again he permitted his glance to dwell on the girl's pale beauty.

He bowed them from the room and from the house. When the door closed on them, Elizabeth turned swiftly to her father.

"He is cruel, heartless, to keep us in suspense. A word, a moment—might have meant so much to us—" she sobbed.

A spasm of pain contracted her father's rugged features.

"He will see us; he is a busy man with unceasing demands on his time, but we have this appointment. Be brave, dear, just a little longer!" he said tenderly.

"I'll try to be, but there is only to-day—and to-morrow—" she faltered.

"Hush, you must not think of that!"

"I can think of nothing else!"

How they lived through the long hours the general never knew, but at last three o'clock came and they were again at the governor's door. It was opened by the servant who had admitted them earlier in the day.

"We have an appointment with the governor," said General Herbert briefly, pushing past him.

"Yes, sir; I will tell him you are here as soon as he comes in," said the man.

"He's out, then?" and General Herbert wheeled on the man.

"Yes, but he's expected back any moment, sir."

"It will be all right," her father again assured Elizabeth, speaking with forced cheerfulness when they were alone.

Ten—twenty minutes slipped by; minutes that were infinitely precious, then a step sounded in the hall. It was the servant who entered the room, however. He came to say that a message had that moment been received from the governor; he was detained at the capitol, and probably would not reach home before five o'clock.

"Does he say he will see us there?" asked the general.

"He didn't mention you, sir; perhaps he has forgotten, but I thought you'd wish to know."

"Thank you." The general turned to his daughter. "I think we'd better go to the capitol."

The carriage was still at the door and they hurried out to it and were whirled across town. As they came to a stand before the capitol, General Herbert, without waiting for Elizabeth, sprang out and strode into the building and up the familiar stairs to the executive chambers. The door of the outer office stood open. A colored janitor was sweeping the room.

"Who you want, boss?" he asked, stopping his work and leaning on the handle of his broom.

"The governor—where is he?" demanded the general.

"You's too late, boss, he's done gone out."

A sense of futility and defeat almost overwhelmed the old general. He was silent for a moment since he dared not trust himself to speak, then he asked:

"Is the governor's secretary here?"

The man shook his head.

"Him and the governor left together. There ain't no one here now, they've done for the day."

"Then the governor has gone home?"

"I expect that's where he went, yes, sir."

General Herbert swung about and hurried from the room. In the hall he met Elizabeth.

"Did you see him?" she asked eagerly.

"Not here," he answered huskily.

Her eyes grew wide with terror, and she swayed as if about to fall, but her father put out a sunburnt hand for her support.

"We must go back!" he said, mastering himself at sight of her suffering. "We have missed him here, he's gone home, that is all—it means nothing."

They drove in silence through the streets. Pallid, fearful, and speechless in her suffering, Elizabeth leaned back in her seat. The hope that had sustained her was lost in the realization of defeat. There was nothing beyond; this was failure, complete and final; the very end of effort! Suddenly her father's big hand closed about the small one which rested in her lap.

"You must not give up; I tell you it will be all right!" he insisted.

"He is avoiding us!" she cried chokingly. "Oh, what can we do when he will not even see us!"

"Yes, he will. We have been unfortunate, that is all."

"Wretchedly unfortunate!" she moaned.

They had reached their destination, and this time slowly and uncertainly they ascended the steps. With his hand upon the bell, the general hesitated for an instant; so much was at stake! Then a bell sounded in some distant part of the house, and after a brief interval the door was opened to them.

"I am sorry, sir, but the governor has not returned."

The general thrust a bill into the man's hand, saying:

"The moment he comes in, see that he gets my card."

Again there was delay. General Herbert, consumed by impatience, crossed and recrossed the room. Elizabeth stood by the window, one hand parting the heavy curtains. It was already late afternoon. The day had been wasted, and the hours that remained to them were perilously few. But more than the thought of North's death, the death itself filled her mind with unspeakable imaginings. The power to control her thoughts was lost, and her terrors took her where they would, until North's very death struggles became a blinding horror. Somewhere in the silent house, a door opened and closed.

"At last!" said the general, under his breath.

But it was only the governor's secretary who entered the room. He halted in the doorway and glanced from father to daughter. There was no mistaking the look on his face.

"How much longer are we to be kept in doubt?" asked General Herbert, in a voice that indicated both his dread and his sense of insult.

"The governor deeply regrets that there should have been this delay—" began the secretary.

"He is ready to see us now?" General Herbert interrupted.

"I regret—"

"What do you regret? Do you mean to tell me that he will not see us?" demanded the general.

"The governor has left town."

The angry color flamed into the old man's cheeks. His sorely tried patience was on the point of giving way, but a cry from the window recalled him.

"Where has he gone?"

"He left for the East at four o'clock," faltered the secretary, after a moment of wretched irresolution.

The general's face became white, as his anger yielded to a more powerful emotion.

"Impossible!" he cried.

"The North matter has been left in my hands," said the secretary haltingly.

The general's hope revived as he heard this. He stepped to Elizabeth's side and rested his hand protectingly on her shoulder.

"You have the governor's decision?" he asked.

"Yes," answered the secretary unsteadily.

There was a moment's silence.

"What is it?" The general's voice was strained and unnatural.

"He regrets it, but he does not deem it proper for him to interfere with the decision of the court. He has had the most eminent legal advice in this case—"

A choking inarticulate cry from Elizabeth interrupted him.

"My God!" cried her father, as Elizabeth's groping hands clung to him. He felt the shudder that wrenched her slim body. "Be brave!" he whispered, slipping his arms about her.

"Oh, father—father—" she sobbed.

"We will go home," said the general.

He looked up from the bowed head that rested against his shoulder, expecting to find the secretary still standing by the door, but that dapper young man had stolen from the room.

"Yes, take me home," said Elizabeth.

He led her from the house and the door closed behind them on their last hope. Both shared in the bitter consciousness of this. They had been brought face to face with the inexorable demands of life, they had been foredoomed to failure from the very beginning.

"Father?" she gasped.

"Yes, dear?" He spoke with infinite tenderness.

"Is there nothing more?"

"Nothing, but to go home."

Deeply as he felt for her, he knew that he realized only an infinitesimal part of her suffering.

"The governor has refused to interfere?"

"You heard what he said, dear," he answered simply.

"And I have to go back and tell John that after all our hopes, after all our prayers—"

"Perhaps you would better not go back," he suggested.

"Not go back? No, I must see him! You would not deny me this—"

"I would deny you nothing," said her father fervently.

"Dismiss the carriage, and we will walk to the station; there is time?"

"Yes."

For a little while they walked on in silence, the girl's hands clasped about her father's arm.

"I can not understand it yet!" said Elizabeth at length, speaking in a fearful whisper. "It is incredible. Oh, can't you save him—can't you?"

The general did not trust himself to answer her.

"We have failed. Do you think it would have been different if Judge Belknap had not been called away?"

General Herbert shook his head.

"And now we must go back to him! We were to have telegraphed him; we won't now, will we?"

"My poor, poor Elizabeth!" cried the general brokenly.

"How shall we ever tell him!"

"I will go alone," said the general.

"No, no—I must see him! You are sure we have time to catch our train—if we should miss it—" and the thought gave her a sudden feverish energy.

"You need not hurry," her father assured her.

"But look at your watch!" she entreated.

"We have half an hour," he said.

"You can think of nothing more to do?" she asked, after another brief silence.

"Nothing, dear."

Little was said until they boarded the train, but in the drawing-room of the Pullman which her father had been able to secure, Elizabeth's restraint forsook her, and she abandoned herself to despair. Her father silently took his place at her side. Oppressed and preoccupied, the sting of defeat unmitigated, he was struggling with the problem of the future. The morrow with its hideous tragedy seemed both the end and the beginning. One thing was clear to him, they must go away from Idle Hour where North had been so much a part of Elizabeth's life. Nothing had been added to this decision when at length the train pulled into Mount Hope.

"We are home, dear," he said gently.



CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE LAST LONG DAY

A long day, the last of many long days he told himself, was ended, and John North stood by his window. Below in the yard into which he was looking, but within the black shadow cast by the jail, was the gallows. Though indistinguishable in the darkness, its shape was seared on his brain, for he had lived in close fellowship with all it emphasized. It was his gallows, it had grown to completion under his very eyes that it might destroy him in the last hour.

There had been for him a terrible fascination in the gaunt thing that gave out the odor of new wood; a thing men had made with their own hands; a clumsy device to inflict a brutal death; a left-over from barbarism which denied every claim of civilization and Christianity! Now, as the moon crept up from behind the distant hills, the black shadows retreated, and as he watched, timber by timber the gallows stood forth distinct in the soft clear light. In a few hours, unless the governor interfered, he would pass through the door directly below his window. He pictured the group of grave-faced nervous officials, he saw himself bound and blindfolded and helpless in their midst.

His fingers closed convulsively about the iron bars that guarded his window, but the feeling of horror that suddenly seized him was remote from self-pity. He was thinking of Elizabeth. What unspeakable wretchedness he had brought into her life, and he was still to bequeath her this squalid brutal death! It was the crowning shame and misery to the long months of doubt and fearful suspense.

Up from the earth came the scent of living growing things. The leaves of the great maples in the court-house grounds rustled in the spring breeze, there was the soft incessant hum of insect life, and over all the white wonderful moonlight. But he had no part in this universal renewal—he was to die his purposeless unheroic death in the morning. For himself he could almost believe he no longer cared; he had fully accepted the idea. He had even taken his farewell of the few in Mount Hope who had held steadfast in their friendship, and there only remained for him to die decently; to meet the inevitable with whatever courage there was in his soul.

He heard Brockett's familar step and suddenly, intent and listening, he faced the door; but the deputy came slowly down the corridor and as he entered the cell, paused, and shook his head.

"No word yet, John," he said regretfully.

"Is the train in?" asked North.

"Yes, Conklin went down to meet it. He's just back; I guess they'll come on the ten-thirty."

North again turned listlessly toward the window.

"I wouldn't own myself beat yet, John!" said the deputy.

"I've gone down at every crisis! I didn't think the grand jury would indict me, I didn't think I would be convicted at the trial!" He made a weary gesture. "What right have I to think they will be able to influence the governor?"

There was a moment's silence broken by the deputy.

"I'll be outside, and if you want anything, let me know."

It was the death-watch, and poor Brockett was to keep it.

North fell to pacing his narrow bounds. Without, the wind had risen and presently there came the patter of rain on the roof. Thick darkness again enveloped the jail yard; and the gallows—his gallows—was no longer visible. For an hour or more the storm raged and then it passed as swiftly as it had gathered. Once more he became aware of the incessant hum of the insect world, and the rustling of the great maples in the court-house grounds.

As he listened to these sounds, from somewhere off in the distance he heard the shriek of an engine's whistle. They were coming now if they came at all! In spite of himself, his hope revived. To believe that they had failed was out of the question, and the beat of his pulse and the throb of his heart quickened.

He endured twenty minutes of suspense, then he heard voices; Brockett threw open the door, and Elizabeth, white-faced and shaking, was before him.

"John!" she cried, with such anguish that in one terrible instant all hope went from him.

His soul seemed to stand naked at the very gates of death, and the vision of his brutal ending came before his burning eyes. Words of protest trembled on his lips. This endured but for an imperceptible space of time, and then that larger pity which was not for himself but for Elizabeth, took him quickly to her side.

"John—" she cried again, and held out her arms.

"Do not speak—I know," he said.

Her head drooped on his shoulder, and her strength seemed to forsake her.

"I know, dear!" he repeated.

"We could do nothing!" she gasped.

"You have done everything that love and devotion could do!"

She looked up into his face.

"You are not afraid?" she whispered, clinging to him.

"I think not," he said simply.

"You are very brave, John—I shall try to be brave, also."

"My dear, dear Elizabeth!" he murmured sadly, and they were silent.

Without, in the corridor, an occasional whispered word passed between General Herbert and the deputy.

"The governor would do nothing, John," Elizabeth faltered at length.

"I understand, dear," he said tenderly.

"He would not even see us; we went repeatedly to his house and to the capitol, and in the end we saw his secretary. The governor had left town; he never intended to see us! To reach this end—when nothing can be done—" Her eyes grew wide with horror.

He drew her closer, and touched her cold lips with his.

"There is one thing you can do that will be a comfort to me, Elizabeth; let your father take you home!"

"No, no, I must stay till morning, until the day breaks—don't send me away, John!" she entreated.

"It will be easier—"

Yet his arms still held her close to him, and he gazed down into the upturned face that rested against his breast. It was his keen sense of her suffering that weighed on him now. What a wreck he had made of her life—what infinite compassion and pity he felt! He held her closer.

"What is it, dear?" she asked.

But he could not translate his feeling into words.

"Oh, if there were only something we could do!" she moaned.

"Through all these weeks you have given me hope and strength! You say that I am brave! Your love and devotion have lifted me out of myself; I would be ashamed to be a coward when I think of all you have endured!"

He felt her shiver in his arms, then in the momentary silence the court-house bell struck the half-hour.

"I thought it was later," she said, as the stroke of the bell died out in the stillness.

"It is best that you should leave this place, dearest—"

"Don't send me from you, John—I can not bear that yet—" she implored.

Pityingly and tenderly his eyes looked deep into hers. What had she not endured for his sake! And the long days of effort had terminated in this last agony of disappointment; but now, and almost mercifully, he felt the fruitless struggle was ended. All that remained was the acceptance of an inexorable fate. He drew forward his chair for her, and as she sank wearily into it, he seated himself on the edge of the cot at her side.

"McBride's murderer will be found one of these days, and then all the world will know that what you believe is the truth," said North at length.

"Yes, dear," replied Elizabeth simply.

Some whispered word of General Herbert's or the deputy's reached them in the interval of silence that ensued. Then presently in that silence they had both feared to break, the court-house bell rang again. It was twelve o'clock. Elizabeth rose.

"I am going now—John—" she said, in a voice so low that he scarcely heard her. "I am going home. You wish it—and you must sleep—" She caught his hands and pressed them to her heart.

"Oh, my darling—good night—"

She came closer in his arms, and held up her lips for him to kiss. The passion of life had given place to the chill of death. It was to-day that he was to die! No longer could they think of it as a thing of to-morrow, for at last the day had come.

"Yes, you must go," he said, in the same low voice in which she had spoken.

"I love you, John—"

"As I do you, beloved—" he answered gently.

"Oh, I can not leave you! My place is here with you to the very last—do not send me away!"

"I could not bear it," he said steadily. "You must leave Mount Hope to-morrow—to-day—"

He felt her arms tighten about his neck.

"To-day?" she faltered miserably. "To-day—"

Her arms relaxed. He pressed his lips to her pale cold lips and to her eyes, from which the light of consciousness had fled.

"General Herbert!" he called.

Instantly the general appeared in the doorway.

"She has fainted!" said North.

Her father turned as if with some vague notion of asking assistance, but North checked him.

"For God's sake take her away while she is still unconscious!" and he placed her in her father's arms. For a moment his hand lingered on the general's shoulder. "Thank you—good-by!" and he turned away abruptly.

"Good-by—God bless you, John!" said the general in a strained voice.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment as if he wished to say more; then as North kept his back turned on him, he gathered the unconscious girl closer in his arms, and walked from the room.

North remained by the window, his hands clutching the bars with convulsive strength, then the wind which blew fresh and strong in his face brought him the sound of wheels; but this quickly died out in the distance.

Brockett tiptoed into the cell.

"I am going to lie down and see if I can get some sleep," North said, throwing off his coat. "If I sleep, call me as soon as it is light—good night."



CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ON THE HIGH IRON BRIDGE

As the weeks had passed Marshall Langham had felt his fears lift somewhat, but the days and nights still remained endless cycles of torment. Wherever he turned and with whomsoever he talked the North case was certain sooner or later to be mentioned. There were hideous rumors afloat, too, concerning General Herbert's activity in behalf of the condemned man, and in spite of his knowledge of the law, he was profoundly affected by this wild gossip, this ignorant conjecture, which reason and experience alike told him misstated every fact that bore on the situation. He was learning just how dependent he had been on Gilmore; no strange imaginings, no foolish vagaries had ever beset the gambler, his brutal vigor had yielded nothing to terror or remorse.

He knew the Herberts had gone to Columbus to make a final appeal to the governor. Father and daughter had been driven across the Square by Thompson, the Idle Hour foreman, and they had passed below the windows of Langham's office on their way to the station. It had seemed to him an iniquitous thing that the old statesman's position and influence should be brought into the case to defeat his hopes, to rob him of his vengeance, to imperil his very safety. Racked and tortured, he had no existence outside his fear and hate. All that day Langham haunted the railway station. If any word did come over the wires, he wished to know it at once, and if General Herbert returned he wished to see him, since his appearance must indicate success or failure. If it were failure the knowledge would come none too quickly; if success, in any degree, he contemplated instant flight, for he was obsessed by the belief that then he would somehow stand in imminent peril.

He was pacing the long platform when the afternoon train arrived, but his bloodshot eyes searched the crowd in vain for a sight of General Herbert's stalwart figure.

"He has just one more chance to get back in time!" he told himself. "If he doesn't come to-night it means I am safe!"

His bloodless lips sucked in the warm air. Safe! It was the first time in months he had dared to tell himself this; yet a moment later and his fears were crowding back crushing him to earth. The general might do much in the six hours that remained to him.

He was back at his post when the night train drew in, and his heart gave a great leap in his breast as he saw the general descend from the platform of the sleeper and then turn to assist Elizabeth. She was closely veiled, but one glance at the pair sufficed.

Langham passed down the long platform. The flickering gas-jets that burned at intervals under the wide eaves of the low station were luminous suns, his brain whirled and his step was unsteady. He passed out into the night, and when the friendly darkness had closed about him, slipped a feverish palm across his eyes and thanked God that his season of despair was at an end. He had suffered and endured but now he was safe!

Before him the train, with its trailing echoes, had dwindled away into the silence of the spring night. Scarcely conscious of the direction he was taking he walked down the track toward the iron bridge. It was as if some miracle of healing had come to him; his heavy step grew light, his shaking hands became steady, his brain clear; in those first moments of security he was the ease-seeking, pleasure-loving Marshall Langham of seven months before.

As he strode forward he became aware that some one was ahead of him on the track, then presently at the bridge a match was struck, and his eyes, piercing the intervening darkness, saw that a man had paused there to light a pipe. He was quite near the bridge himself when another match flared, and he was able to distinguish the figure of this man who was crouching back of one of the iron girders. A puff of wind extinguished the second match almost immediately, and after a moment or two in which the lawyer continued to advance, a third match was struck; at the same instant the man must have heard the sound of Langham's approach, for as he brought the blazing match to the bowl of a short black pipe, he turned, standing erect, and Langham caught sight of his face. It was Joe Montgomery. Another playful gust found Mr. Montgomery's match and the two men stood facing each other in the darkness.

Langham had been about to speak but the words died on his lips; a wave of horror passed over him. He had known not quite ten minutes of security and now it was at an end; his terror all revived; this hulking brute who faced him there in the darkness menaced his safety, a few drinks might give him courage to go to Moxlow or to the general with his confession. How was he to deal with the situation?

"There ain't much Irish about me!" said Montgomery, with a casual oath.

There was a moment of silence. The handy-man was searching his pockets for a fresh match.

"Why have you come back, Joe?" asked Langham finally, when he could command himself.

Montgomery started violently and his pipe fell from his mouth.

"Is that you, Boss Langham?" he faltered.

He stared about him seeking to pierce the darkness, fearful that Langham was not alone, that Gilmore might be somewhere near.

"Are you by yourself, boss?" he asked, and a tremor stole into his hoarse throaty voice. He still carried the scars of that fearful beating Gilmore had administered.

"Yes," said Langham. "I'm alone."

"I didn't know but Andy Gilmore might be with you, boss," said Montgomery, clearing his throat.

"No, he's not here," replied Langham quietly. "He's left town."

"Yes, but he'll be comin' back!" said the handy-man with a short laugh.

"No, he's gone for good."

"Well, I ain't sorry. I hope to God I never see him again—he beat me up awful! I was as good a friend as he'll ever have; I was a perfect yellow dog to him; he whistled and I jumped, but I'll be damned if I ever jump again! Say, I got about eighteen inches of old gas-pipe slid down my pants leg now for Mr. Andy; one good slug with that, and he won't have no remarks to make about my goin' home to my old woman!"

"You won't have to use it."

"I'm almost sorry," said Montgomery.

"I suppose that thirst of yours is unimpaired?" inquired Langham.

His burning eyes never for an instant forsook the dark outline of the handy-man's slouching figure.

"I dunno, boss, I ain't been drinkin' much lately. Liquor's a bully thing to keep the holes in your pants, and your toes out where you can look at 'em if you want to. I dunno as I'll ever take up whisky-drinkin' again," concluded Mr. Montgomery, with a self-denying shake of the head.

"Are you glad to be back, Joe?" asked Langham.

It was anything to gain time, he was thinking desperately but to no purpose.

"Glad! Stick all the cuss words you know in front of that and it will be mild!" cried Montgomery feelingly. "It's pitiful the way I been used, just knocked from pillar to post; I've seen dogs right here in Mount Hope that had a lot happier time than I've been havin'—and me a married man! I've always tried to be a good husband, I hope there won't be no call for me to make a rough-house of it to-night!" he added playfully, as he looked off across the bridge.

"I guess not, Joe," said Langham.

His fears assembled themselves before him like a phantom host. How was he to deal with the handy-man; how would Gilmore have dealt with him? Had the time gone by to bully and bribe, or was that still the method by which he could best safeguard his life?

"Say, boss, what they done with young John North?" Montgomery suddenly demanded.

"Nothing yet," answered Langham after an instant's pause.

"Ain't he had his trial?" Montgomery asked.

"Yes."

"Well, ain't they done anything with him? If he ain't been sent up, he's been turned loose."

"Neither, Joe," rejoined Langham slowly. "The jury didn't agree. His friends are trying to get the judge to dismiss the case."

"That would suit me bully, boss, if they done that!" cried the handy-man.

Langham caught the tone of relief.

"I don't want to see him hang; I don't want to see no one hang, I'm all in favor of livin', myself. Say, I had a sweet time out West! I'd a died yonder; I couldn't stand it, I had to come back—just had to!"

He was shaking and wretched, and he exaggerated no part of the misery he had known.

"When did you get in?" asked Langham.

"I beat my way in on the ten-thirty; I rode most of the way from Columbus on top of the baggage car—I'm half dead, boss!"

"Have you seen any one?"

"No one but you. I got off at the crossin' where they slow up and come along here; I wasn't thinkin' of a damn thing but gettin' home to my old woman. I guess I'll hit the ties right now!" he concluded with sudden resolution, and once more his small blue eyes were turned toward the bridge.

"I'll walk across to the other side with you," said Langham hastily.

"The crick's up quite a bit!" said the handy-man as they set foot on the bridge.

Langham glanced out into the gloom, where swollen by the recent rains the stream splashed and whirled between its steep banks.

"Yes, way up!" he answered.

As he spoke he stepped close to Montgomery's side and raised his voice.

"Stop a bit," said Joe halting. "I shan't need this now," and he drew the piece of gas-pipe from his trousers pocket. "I'd have hammered the life out of Andy Gilmore!" he said, as he tossed the ugly bludgeon from him.

"You haven't told me where you have been," said Langham, and once more he pressed close to Montgomery, so close their elbows touched.

The handy-man moved a little to one side.

"Where ain't I been, you better ask, boss," he said. "I seen more rotten cities and more rotten towns and more rotten country than you can shake a stick at; God A'mighty knows what's the good of it—I dunno! Everybody I seen was strangers to me, never a face I knowed anywhere; Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver—to hell with 'em all, boss; old Mount Hope's good enough for me!" And the handy-man shrugged his huge slanting shoulders.

"Don't go so fast, Joe!" Langham cautioned, and his eyes searched the darkness ahead of them.

"It's a risky business for you, boss," said the handy-man. "You ain't used to this bridge like me."

"Do you always come this way?" asked Langham.

"Always, in all seasons and all shapes, drunk or sober, winter or summer," said the handy-man.

"One wouldn't have much chance if he slipped off here to-night," said Langham with a shudder.

"Mighty little," agreed Montgomery. "Say, step over, boss—we want to keep in the middle! There—that's better, I was clean outside the rail."

"Can you swim?" asked Langham.

"Never swum a stroke. The dirt's good enough for me; I got a notion that these here people who are always dippin' themselves are just naturally filthy. Look at me, a handy-man doing all kinds of odd jobs, who's got a better right to get dirty—but I leave it alone and it wears off. I'm blame certain you won't find many people that fool away less money on soap than just me!" said Joe with evident satisfaction. "The old woman's up!" he cried, as he caught the glimmer of a light on the shore beyond.

Perhaps unconsciously he quickened his pace.

"Not so fast, Joe!" gasped Langham.

"Oh, all right, boss!" responded Montgomery.

Langham turned to him quickly, but as he did so his foot struck the cinder ballast of the road-bed.

"Good night, boss!" said Joe, his eyes fixed on the distant light.

"Wait!" said Langham imperiously.

"What for?" demanded Montgomery.

"The water made such a noise I couldn't talk to you out on the bridge," began Langham.

"Well, I can't stop now, boss," said the handy-man, turning impatiently from him.

"Yes, damn you—you can—and will!" and Langham raised his voice to give weight to his words.

Montgomery rounded up his shoulders.

"Don't you try that, boss! Andy Gilmore could shout me down and cuss me out, but you can't; and I'll peel the face off you if you lay hands on me!" He thrust out a grimy fist and menaced Langham with it. There was a brief silence and the handy-man swung about on his heel.

"Good night, boss!" he said over his shoulder, as he moved off.

Langham made no answer, but long after Joe's shuffling steps had died away in the distance he was still standing there irresolute and undecided, staring fixedly off into the darkness that had swallowed up the handy-man's hulking figure.

Mr. Montgomery, muttering somewhat and wagging his head, continued along the track for a matter of a hundred yards, when his feet found a narrow path which led off in the direction of the light he had so confidently declared was his old woman's. Then presently as he shuffled forward, the other seven houses of the row of which his was the eighth, cloaked in utter darkness, took shadowy form against the sky. The handy-man stumbled into his unkempt front yard, its metes and bounds but indifferently defined by the remnants of what had been a picket fence; he made his way to the side door, which he threw open without ceremony. As he had surmised, his old woman was up. She was seated by the table in the corner, engaged in mending the ragged trousers belonging to Joseph Montgomery, junior.

At sight of Joe, senior, she screamed and flung them aside; then white and shaking she came weakly to her feet. The handy-man grinned genially. He was not of demonstrative temperament.

"Joe!" cried Nellie, as she sprang toward him. "Dear Joe!" and she threw her arms about him.

"Oh, hell!" said the handy-man.

Nellie was hanging limply about his neck and he was aware that she had kissed him; he could not remember when before she had taken such a liberty. Mr. Montgomery believed in a reasonable display of affection, but kissing seemed to him a singularly frivolous practice.

"Oh, my man!" sobbed Nellie.

"Oh, cheese it, and let me loose—I don't like this to-do! Can't a married man come home without all this fuss?"

"Dear Joe, you've come back to me and your babies!" And the tears streamed down her cheeks.

"I don't need you to tell me that—I got plenty sense enough to know when I'm home!" said Montgomery, not without bitterness.

"I mourned you like you was passed away, until your letter come!" said Nellie, and the memory of her sufferings set her sobbing afresh.

"Oh, great hell!" exclaimed Joe dejectedly. "Why can't you act cheerful? What's the good of takin' on, anyhow—I don't like tombstone talk."

"It was just the shock of seein' you standin' there in the door like I seen you so often!" said Nellie weakly.

"If that ain't a woman for you, miserable because she's happy. Say, stop chokin' me; I won't stand for much more of this nonsense, you might know I don't like these to-dos!"

"You don't know what I've suffered, Joe!"

"That's a woman for you every time—always thinkin' of herself! To hear you talk any one would think I'd been to a church picnic; I look like I'd been to a picnic, don't I? Yes, I do—like hell!"

"They said you would never come back to me," moaned Nellie.

"Who said that?" asked Mr. Montgomery aggressively.

"Everybody—the neighbors—Shrimplin—they all said it!"

"Ain't I told you never to listen to gossip, and ain't I always done what's right?" interrogated the handy-man severely.

"Yes, always, Joe," said Nellie.

"Then you might know'd I'd come back when I got plenty good and ready. I fooled 'em all, and I'm here to stay—that is if you keep your hands off me!"

"You mean it, Joe?" asked Nellie.

"What? About your keepin' your hands off me? Yes, you bet I do!"

And Montgomery by a not ungentle effort released himself from his wife's embrace. This act so restored his self-respect that he grinned pleasantly at her.

"I don't know when I been so happy, Joe—it's awful nice to have you back!" said Nellie, wiping her eyes on the corner of her apron.

"There's some sense in your sayin' that," said the handy-man, shaking his head. "You ought to feel happy."

"You don't ask after your children, Joe.—"

"Don't I? Well, maybe you don't give me no time to!" said Mr. Montgomery, but without any special enthusiasm, since the truth was that his interest in his numerous offspring was most casual.

"They're all well, and the littlest, Tom—the one you never seen—has got his first tooth!" said Nellie.

Joe grunted at this information.

"He'll have more by and by, won't he?" he said.

"How you talk, of course he will!"

"He'd have a devil of a time chewin' his food if he didn't," observed, the handy-man with a throaty chuckle.

"And, Joe, I got the twenty dollars you sent!"

"Is any of it left?" inquired Mr. Montgomery, with sudden interest.

"The rent and things took it all. That was the noblest act you ever done, Joe; it made me certain you was thinkin' of us, and from the moment I got that money I was sure you would come back no matter what people said!"

"Humph!" said Joe. "Is there anything in the house fit to eat? Because if there is, I'll feed my face right now!"

"Do set down, Joe; I'll have something for you in a minute—why didn't you tell me you was hungry?"

She was already rattling plates and knives at the cupboard, and Joe took the chair she had quitted when he entered the house, stretching his legs under his own table with a sense of deep satisfaction. He had not considered it worth his while to visit the kitchen sink, although his mode of life, as well as his mode of travel for days past, had covered him with dust and grime; nor did he take off his ragged cap. It had always been his custom to wear it in the privacy of his own home, it was one of the last things he removed before going to bed at night; at all other times it reposed on the top of his curly red head as the only safe place for a cap to be.

"I was real worried about Arthur along in March," said Mrs. Montgomery, as such odds and ends as had survived the appetites of all the little Montgomerys began to assemble themselves on the table.

"What's he been a-doin'?" inquired Arthur's father.

"It was his chest," explained Nellie.

Joe grunted. By this time his two elbows were planted on the edge of the table and his mouth was brought to within six scant inches of his plate. The handy-man's table manners were not his strong point.

"Oh, I guess his chest is all right!" he paused to say.

"I thought it was best to be on the safe side, so I took him up-town and had his health examined by a doctor. He had to take off his shirt so he could hear Arthur's lungs."

"Well, I'm damned,—what did he do that for?" cried Joe, profoundly astonished.

"It was a mercy I'd washed him first," added Nellie, not comprehending the reason of her husband's sudden show of interest though gratified by it.

"Lord, I thought you meant the doctor had took off his shirt!" said Joe. "He's all right now, ain't he?"

"Yes, but he did have such an alarmin' cough; it hung on and hung on, it seemed to me like it was on his chest, but the doctor said no, and I was that relieved! I used some of the twenty dollars to pay him and to get medicine from the drug store."

Joe was cramming his mouth full of cold meat and bread, and for the moment could not speak; when at length he could and did, it was to say:

"I hear Andy Gilmore's left town?"

"Yes, all of a sudden, and no one knows where he's gone!"

"I guess he's had enough of Mount Hope, and I guess Mount Hope's had enough of him!" remarked Joe.

"They say the police was goin' to stop the gamblin' in his rooms if he hadn't gone when he did."

"Well, I hope he'll catch hell wherever he is!" said Joe, with a sullen drop to his voice.

"For a while after you left, Joe, they didn't give me no peace at all—the police and detectives, I mean—they was here every day! And Shrimplin told me they was puttin' advertisements in the papers all over the country."

"What for?" inquired Montgomery uneasily.

"They wanted to find out where you'd gone; it seemed like they was determined to get you back as a witness for the trial," explained Nellie.

Montgomery's uneasiness increased. He began to wonder fearfully if he was in any danger, vague forebodings assailed him. Suppose he was pinched and sent up. His face blanched and his small blue eyes slid around in their sockets. Nellie was evidently unaware of the feeling of terror her words had inspired, for she continued:

"But it didn't make no difference in the end that you wasn't here, for everybody says it was you that hanged John North; you get all the credit for that!"

Montgomery's hands fell at his side.

"Me hanged John North! Me hanged John North!" he repeated. "But he ain't hanged—God A'mighty, he ain't hanged yet!"

His voice shot up into a wail of horrified protest. Nellie regarded him with a look of astonishment. She had been rather sorry for young John North, but she had also felt a certain wifely pride in Joe's connection with the case.

"No, he ain't hanged yet but he will be in the morning!" she said.

The handy-man sprang to his feet, knocking over the chair in which he had been seated.

"What's that?" he roared.

"Why, haven't you heard? He's to be hung in the morning."

Joe glared at her with starting eyes.

"What will they do that for—hang him—hang John North!" He tore off his ragged cap and dashed it to the floor at his feet. "To hell with Andy Gilmore and to hell with Marsh Langham—that's why they drove me out of town—to hell with 'em both!" he shouted, and his great chest seemed bursting with pent-up fury.

"Why, whatever do you mean, Joe?" cried Nellie.

"He never done it—you hear me—and they know it! You sure you got the straight of this—they are goin' to hang young John North?" He seized her roughly by the shoulders.

"Yes—how you take on, Joe—"

"Take on!" he shouted. "You'd take on too if you stood in my place. You're sure you know what you're talkin' about?"

"I seen the fence around the jail yard where they're goin' to hang him; I went over on purpose yesterday with one of the neighbors and took Arthur; I thought it would be improvin', but he'd seen it before. There ain't much he don't see—for all I can do he just runs the streets."

Joe's resolution had been formed while she was speaking, and now he snatched his ragged cap from the floor.

"You stay right here till I get back!" he said gruffly.

It was not his habit to discuss affairs of any moment with Mrs. Montgomery, since in a general way he doubted the clearness of the feminine judgment, and in the present instance he had no intention of taking her into his confidence. The great problem by which he was confronted he would settle in his own fashion.

"You ain't in any trouble, Joe?" and Nellie's eyes widened with the birth of sudden fear.

The handy-man was standing by the door, and she went to his side.

"Me? No, I guess not; but I got an everlastin' dose of it for the other fellow!" and he reached for the knob.

"Was it what I said about the police wantin' you?" his wife asked timidly.

She knew that his dealings with the police had never been of an especially fortunate nature. He shook off the hand she had placed on his arm.

"You keep your mouth shut till I get back!" he said, and pushing open the door, passed out.

The night had cleared since he crossed the bridge, and from the great blue arch of heaven the new moon gave her radiance to a sleeping world. But Montgomery was aware only of his purpose as he slouched along the path toward the railroad track. The horror of North's fate had fixed his determination, nothing of terror or fear that he had ever known was comparable to the emotion he was experiencing now. He did not even speculate on the consequences to himself of the act he had decided on. They said that he had hanged John North—he got the credit for that—well, John North wasn't hanged yet! He tossed his arms aloft. "My God, I didn't mean to do that!" he muttered.

He had gained the railroad tracks and was running toward the bridge, the very seconds seemed of infinite value to him, for suppose he should have difficulty in finding Moxlow? And if he found the prosecuting attorney, would he believe his story? A shudder passed through him. He was quite near the bridge when suddenly he paused and a whispered curse slipped from between his parted lips. A man was standing at the entrance to the bridge and though it was impossible to distinguish more than the shadowy outline of his figure, Montgomery was certain that it was Marshall Langham. His first impulse was to turn back and go into town by the wagon road and the wooden bridge, but as he hesitated the figure came toward him, and Langham spoke.

"Is that you, Joe?" he asked.

"Damn him, he knows I won't stand for hangin' North!" the handy-man told himself under his breath. He added aloud as he shuffled forward, "Yes, it's me, boss!"

"Couldn't you make it right with Nellie?" asked Langham.

"Oh, it isn't that—the old woman's all right—but the baby's sick and I'm out huntin' a doctor."

He did not expect Langham to believe him, but on the spur of the moment he could think of nothing better.

"I am sorry to hear that!" said Langham.

An evil wolfish light stole into his eyes and the lines of his weak debauched face hardened.

"What's the matter with you, boss; couldn't you get across?" asked Joe.

"No, the bridge is too much for me. Like a fool I stopped here to smoke a cigar after you left me; I hoped it would clear off a bit so I could see the ties, but it's worse now that I can. I had about made up my mind to come and get you to help me back into town."

"Come along, boss, I'm in a terrible hurry!" said Joe eagerly.

But Langham was a pace or two in advance of him when they stepped out on the bridge. Never once did he glance in the handy-man's direction. Had he done so, Montgomery must have been aware that his face showed bloodless in the moonlight, while his sunken eyes blazed with an unaccustomed fire.

"I can't walk these ties, Joe—give me your hand—" he managed to say.

Joe did as he desired, and as the lawyer's slim fingers closed about his great fist he was conscious that a cold moisture covered them. He could only think of a dead man's hand.

"What's wrong with the baby, Joe?" Langham asked.

"Seems like it's got a croup," said Joe promptly.

"That's too bad—"

"Yes, it's a hell of a pity," agreed Montgomery.

He was furtively watching Langham out of the corners of his beady blue eyes; his inner sense of things told him it was well to do this. They took half a dozen steps and Langham released Joe's hand.

"I wonder if I can manage this alone!" he said. But apparently the attempt was a failure, for he quickly rested his hand on his companion's massive shoulder.

They had reached the second of the bridge's three spans. Below them in the darkness the yellow flood poured in noisy volume. As Langham knew, here the stream was at its deepest and its current the swiftest. He knew also that his chance had come; but he dared not make use of it. The breath whistled from his lips and the moisture came from every pore. He sought frantically to nerve himself for the supreme moment; but suppose he slipped, or suppose Joe became aware of his purpose one second too soon!

"Keep over a bit, boss!" said the handy-man suddenly. "You are crowding me off the bridge!"

"Oh, all right; is that better?"

And Langham moved a step aside.

"A whole lot," responded Joe gruffly. But his little blue eyes, alert with cunning, were never withdrawn from the lawyer for an instant.

They walked forward in silence for a moment or two, and were approaching the end of the center span, when the lawyer glanced about him wildly; he realized that he was letting slip his one great opportunity. Again Joe spoke:

"Keep over, boss!" And then all in the same breath, "What the hell are you up to, anyway?"

It must be now or it would be never; and Langham, turning swiftly, hurled himself on his companion, and his slim fingers with their death-like chill gripped Joe's hairy throat. In the suddenness of the attack he was forced toward the edge of the bridge. The rush of the noisy waters sounded with fearful distinctness in his ears.

"Here, damn you, let go!" panted Montgomery.



He felt Langham's hot breath on his cheek, he read murder by the wolfish light in his eyes. He wrenched himself free of the other's desperate clutch, but as he did so his foot caught against one of the rails and he slipped and fell to his knees. In the intervals of his own labored breathing, he heard the flow of the river, a dull ceaseless roar, and saw the flashing silver of the moon's rays as they touched the water's turgid surface. Langham no longer sought to force him from the bridge, but bent every effort to thrust him down between the ties to a swift and certain death.

"You want to kill me, too!" panted Montgomery, as by a mighty effort that brought the veins on neck and forehead to the point of bursting, he regained his footing on the ties.

But his antagonist was grimly silent, and Joe, roused to action by fear, and by a sullen rage at what he deemed the lawyer's perfidy, turned and grappled with him. Once he smashed his great fist full into Langham's face, and though the blow sent the lawyer staggering across the bridge, he recovered himself quickly and rushed back to renew the fight. Montgomery greeted him with an oath, and they grappled again.

Langham had known in his calmer moments when he planned Joe's death, that his only hope of success lay in the suddenness of his attack. Now as they swayed on the very edge of the bridge the handy-man put forth all his strength and lifted the lawyer clear of the ties, then with a mighty heave of his great shoulders he tossed him out into space.

There was a scarcely audible splash and Joe, looking fearfully down, saw the muddy drops turn limpid in the soft white light. A moment later some dark object came to the surface and a white face seemed to look up into his, but only for a second, and then the restless flood bore it swiftly away.