EXCERPTS


One of the lodgers at the Claymore Inn had great cause for
complaint the next morning. A restless tramping over his head had
kept him awake all night. That it was intermittent had made it all
the more intolerable. Just when he thought it had stopped, it
would start up again,--to and fro, to and fro, as regular as
clockwork and much more disturbing.

But the complaint never reached Mrs. Averill. The landlady had
been restless herself. Indeed, the night had been one of thought
and feeling to more than one person in whom we are interested. The
feeling we can understand; the thought--that is, Mrs. Averill's
thought--we should do well to follow.

The one great question which had agitated her was this: Should she
trust the judge? Ever since the discovery which had changed
Reuther's prospects, she had instinctively looked to this one
source for aid and sympathy. Her reasons she has already given.
His bearing during the trial, the compunction he showed in
uttering her husband's sentence were sufficient proof to her that
for all his natural revulsion against the crime which had robbed
him of his dearest friend, he was the victim of an undercurrent of
sympathy for the accused which could mean but one thing--a doubt
of the prisoner's actual guilt.

But her faith had been sorely shaken in the interview just
related. He was not the friend she had hoped to find. He had