As Bill made his way through the swinging gates, Blodgett put out a detaining arm, asking, with a scowl, "Here, what do you want?"

"Been arrestin' any one in California lately?" Bill slid past Blodgett, ignoring his attempt to stop him, the old twinkle in his eye as he touched what he knew to be the sheriff's sensitive spot.

"Well, Lightnin'," Marvin exclaimed, "how did you get here and what in the world have you come for?"

"Yer case ain't over yet, is it?"

Marvin shook his head, repeating his first question.

Bill did not reply at once. Not wanting Marvin to know that he and Zeb had been nearly two weeks getting there, and that they had come in much the same way they had gone, riding when they could get a lift on a train or a wagon, walking when they could not, he pretended to forget the young man's questions, asking one himself instead, "What time your case comin' up?"

"Two o'clock."

The sheriff sauntered up to them. Bill knew the purpose of his approach was to catch the drift of their conversation, so he turned abruptly, his hands in his back pockets, and grinned at Blodgett. Nodding toward Marvin, he drawled, "I'm a witness for him. I got to testify how you served a warrant on him."

The sheriff glared and slouched over to his chair, throwing himself into it as he pulled his black sombrero down over his eyes.

Marvin, his arm about Bill's shoulders, leaned over him, guiding him gently to the attorneys' table. "Well, Lightnin'," he questioned, in an indulgent voice, "how did you happen to show up here?"

"I promised you, didn't I?"

"But that was a long time ago. I supposed you'd forgotten all about it."

Bill glanced quickly at him and smiled. "I ain't never forgotten nothin' since I was four years old."

Marvin, happy to see the old Lightnin' behind the boast, smiled, asking him, "How did you know the trial was to-day?"

"That's easy," Bill replied, as he sat against the edge of the table, steadying himself with his hands. "I seen it in a Reno paper at the Home."

"But I told you the time I came to see you that you needn't bother about coming. I wouldn't have had you come all this long way for the world if I had known it." There was concern in Marvin's voice as he slowly dropped into a chair in front of Bill.

"That's why I didn't say nothin'."

"Where did the money come from?"

"I saved my pension." Bill glanced slyly at him. Catching his questioning eye, he stopped and looked through the window into the distance.

"You told me you sent your pension money to your wife!"

"I did—some of it. I sent mother six dollars, but I didn't get no answer." The laughter went from Bill and he leaned over, looking toward the far hills, strange, unreal purple against the clear, cold blue of the April sky.

Marvin watched him, asking, "Did you tell her you were in the Soldiers' Home?"

"No." Bill's voice was devoid of inflection.

"Then she probably didn't know where you were."

"Where else could I be?" His lips were puckered into a whistle, although they were quivering and no tune came. It was always this way when he thought of mother, so he straightened himself and stood by Marvin's chair, forcing a smile to his lips and jerking out, "And six dollars is six dollars."

The court-room was filling again, five minutes having elapsed since recess was declared. A side door opened and Townsend came into court. Blodgett stood up, pounded the desk with his gavel and announced the opening of the session. Bill and Marvin, rising to order, started and looked at each other as Thomas entered the room just behind the judge. Following him was Everett Hammond, who, when he saw Bill and Marvin together at the attorneys' table, began vigorous and anxious whispering in Thomas's ear as he took his place next to him on the other side of the table.

Margaret Davis entered from the judge's chambers. She was accompanied by Mrs. Jones and Millie.

Bill did not see them. His eyes were fastened on Hammond and Thomas in close conference.

But suddenly, as he turned to take in the rest of the people in the room, his eyes alighted on his wife. He arose and wandered toward her, exclaiming, as she came to meet him, "Why, mother, what are you doing here?" He stared at her and held out his hand.

Mrs. Jones was so surprised to see him that she could not speak and stood still, her hands in the air half-way between her waist and shoulder.

Millie was the first to answer him. "Oh, daddy—" She was going to put her arms around him, when Blodgett rapped upon the table for order.

Tears sprang to Mrs. Jones's eyes and Margaret Davis arose and led her to a chair next to hers and just at the foot of the platform, from which Townsend smiled happily upon them.

"Come along, Mr. Clerk!" There was cheer in Townsend's voice as he directed another saccharine shaft toward Margaret. "I've got an important engagement and I want to get through. Call the next case."

Bill, his eyes still on his wife, walked slowly to the table and sat down just behind Marvin.

"Jones versus Jones," read the clerk, standing at one side of the platform and unfolding the document he held in his hand.

Bill did not hear him. He was gazing at Mrs. Jones, an old tenderness in his eyes, a bitter longing in his heart. Drifting, living only for the hour, as was his nature, but one scar had remained unobliterated upon his memory, one hope alone flickered in the lonely sanctuary of a soul that had known no conflicts. His affection for his wife had been something deeper than emotion, something lighter than passion. It had been the lasting quantity in a life of fleeting concepts, and his six months at the Home had subdued it into a dull ache which found relief only when a faint optimism brought vague dreams of a remote reunion.

Her presence in court puzzled him. He felt that it must have something to do with the sale of the place, or, perhaps, with Marvin's case. And yet he was sure she knew nothing of the transaction between Mrs. Marvin and Thomas, or between Rodney Harper and Marvin. Whatever it was, it had brought a ray of expectancy to Bill, and he jumped as he was brought out of his reverie by Marvin's perplexed whisper: "Jones versus Jones. By Jove, Lightnin', I believe that's you!"

"Me?" Bill glanced around as if he were half awake and leaned far forward in his chair, putting his hand to his ear and straining to catch every word as the clerk read the complaint:

"To the people of the State of Nevada, Mary Jones, Plaintiff versus William Jones, Defendant. A civil action wherein the said plaintiff deposes and says she was lawfully married to the said defendant on the 14th day of June, eighteen hundred and ninety-six, in the state of Nevada. The said plaintiff prays this court for a permanent annulment of her marriage vows, the defendant, William Jones, having disregarded and broken all obligations of the marriage contract, thereby causing the plaintiff great suffering and mental agony and the said Mary Jones claims a final separation and divorce from the said William Jones on the grounds of failure to provide, habitual intoxication, and intolerable cruelty. Subscribed and sworn to me on the fifth day of April, nineteen hundred and seventeen. Alexander Bradshaw, Notary: Raymond Thomas, Attorney for the plaintiff."

When the clerk had finished Bill sent a beseeching glance toward his wife. Each word of the document had entered far into a mind little given to taking account. One by one he had tolled off the record against him, placing the accusations in two files—the true and the false. That his wife had cause for anger against him he now, for the first time, fully realized. But he was bewildered, and when Bill was bewildered it was his habit to seek enlightenment.

After a moment, in which Mrs. Jones darted swift glances from beneath a brow bowed with regret, he turned to Marvin, who had arisen and was standing back of his chair, bending over him, and asked, simply, "Is that all about me?"

Blodgett tapped his sheriff's gavel.

Townsend caught Bill's question and asked, "What did you say?"

Marvin, knowing that Bill was inadequate to the test placed upon him, came quickly to the rescue. Standing in front of the judge, he explained: "Your Honor, Mr. Jones is the unconscious defendant in this case. It just happened that he came to court to-day to be a witness in another case. He has had no previous knowledge of this action."

Before he could go farther Raymond Thomas, upon whom the entire situation was reacting in swift, powerful threats to his cause, arose, his face drawn with the agony of frustration, his voice high pitched from the effort to subdue the feelings fast getting beyond his control. "The defendant's whereabouts were unknown to us, your Honor, and the court allowed us to serve notice by publication."

"Publication in what?" Marvin demanded, as he darted contempt at Thomas.

Townsend answered him. "Proper service was given, if the defendant could not be located." To Bill he addressed the next question, "Is that what you asked about?"

Still confused, and not yet quite getting the trend of the whole matter, he asked, in his quiet, disinterested way, "Who, me?"

"Yes," replied the judge. "You made some remark after the complaint was read."

"I wasn't sure I'd got it straight," Bill said, looking ahead of him, mouth half open.

"You mean the grounds on which the action is based?" the judge persisted.

There was a pause, in which Bill looked first at Thomas, whose lids drooped under the old man's scrutiny, and then at his wife, who hung her head. "I guess so," he jerked, drumming his fingers softly on the table.

Townsend ordered the clerk to repeat that part of the complaint wherein the grounds for the suit were mentioned. The clerk repeated, "Failure to provide, habitual intoxication, and intolerable cruelty."

Bill listened attentively. As the clerk sat down, Bill looked up at the judge, asking, "Is that all?"

LIGHTNIN', IN HIS FADED G. A. R. UNIFORM ... LISTENED ATTENTIVELY

"Don't you think it's enough?" There was admonition in his manner, but there was a certain gentleness in his voice and a smile of sympathy lurked at the corners of his mouth. It was difficult for Lemuel Townsend, who knew the lovable side of the careless old man, but he was determined to maintain the dignity and the integrity of the law, and he knew that he must remain unbiased, no matter how strong his feeling was that here there had been sad tampering with truth and the finer essences of happiness.

His severity did not touch Bill. His sense of humor, always close to the surface, asserted itself. A gleam that was half derision, half amusement, lighted his eyes as he grinned up at the judge. "Sounded as if there was more the first time."

Marvin again stood before the judge. He knew that Bill had no one to defend him and he had not felt the necessity of offering himself. He just took it for granted that Bill would turn to him in the dilemma and so he took the case in his hands. "I am counsel for the defendant, your Honor," he said, "and he is entering a general denial."

"Are you counsel for the defense?" Townsend's astonishment was evident in his long-drawn inflection. He had not heard of Marvin's admission to the bar. Neither had he seen the young man about lately, and the whole situation puzzled him.

Before Marvin could answer him, Bill was out of his seat, replying for him, "Yes, sir, he is my lawyer."

It was not the judge's way to admit himself baffled. Turning to Thomas, he instructed him to call his witnesses.

Marvin took a seat in front of Bill at the attorneys' table, while Bill on the edge of his chair leaned forward expectantly, his eyes fastened not on Thomas, but upon his wife, who sat with her head bowed and her eyes staring into her lap.

Thomas beckoned to Mrs. Jones, calling her name.

As she arose, Hammond, who sat next to Thomas on the other side of the table from Marvin and Bill, and who had appeared indifferent and bored so far in the proceedings, jumped to his feet, dismay written on every feature, and hastened to whisper in his partner's ear: "Are you crazy? The most dangerous thing you can do, now that old Jones is in court, is to call her to the stand."

Thomas in his vaunted shrewdness had overlooked this possibility, but now that Hammond mentioned it to him he saw what disastrous complications Mrs. Jones's presence on the witness-stand might lead to. Nodding in answer to Hammond's counsel, he again turned to Mrs. Jones, saying, "I don't think it will be necessary for you to testify at all, Mrs. Jones." As she sat down, he smiled at Millie, addressing her, "Miss Buckley, will you take the stand, please?"

Millie had not expected to be called, and as she arose at his summons her face flushed with embarrassment. She stood still momentarily and her eyes met Marvin's for the first time since he had appeared in court. With an angry flash they quickly sought the witness-chair, and, although trembling at the ordeal before her, she made an effort to trip lightly to the stand. As she took her place and was sworn in by the clerk her replies were scarcely audible. Casting frightened glances up through her long lashes at Thomas, she was reassured by a smile. After the preliminary examination as to her adoption by Bill and Mrs. Jones and her residence with them since she was three years old, he began upon the intimate questions which he hoped would weave a web of incriminating evidence against Bill, evidence which would redound to his justification in the part he had played in bringing about the divorce.

"Miss Buckley," he asked, pulling nervously at his cuffs and bringing them down two or three inches below his sleeves, "Mrs. Jones has toiled early and late to provide for the family ever since you can remember, has she not?"

Millie nodded, gazing anxiously at Bill, who, far forward on his chair, was drinking in every word she said. There was a pitiful accusation behind the sadness in the eyes with which he returned her gaze.

As Thomas continued she, like her mother, concentrated her attention on her hands folded tight in her lap.

"Why did you leave home three years ago, Miss Buckley?"

"To earn my living, of course," was the reply, in low, reluctant tones.

"What did you do with your wages?"

Millie hesitated. After taking out barely enough to live on in meager fashion she had sent most of the remainder home, not because either Mrs. Jones or Bill had asked for help, but because she knew how difficult was their living during the long winter months when their only source of income was Bill's pension and the few mountain people who dropped in when passing back and forth and remain overnight and for a meal or so. Had she known that she was to be called as a witness she might even have refused to accompany Mrs. Jones to court, for Bill's derelictions could never outweigh the knowledge that it was he who had saved her from an orphanage. She swallowed the lump in her throat, but even this did not keep back her tears at the thought that her answer might be the betrayal of the old man who had been a father to her through all the years.

Thomas saw her disinclination and understood the condition of mind which prompted it. He knew he must call his persuasive powers to his aid, so he went very close to the witness-stand, and, leaning over her, spoke in his softest tones.

"I am sorry to have to ask these questions, Miss Buckley, because I know how you dread to testify in this case, but it is unavoidable. Will you answer my question? You sent the greater part of your wages home, did you not?" He spoke as if he, too, were distressed.

Millie, falling into the trap, sighed, "Yes, sir."

"And you really left home to earn money in order to help support the Jones family, didn't you?"

Again, overcome by the complications of the situation in which she found herself, she was unable to answer except with a reluctant nod.

"Did you ever see Mrs. Jones's husband drunk?"

As Thomas asked this question he looked toward Bill. Millie did not answer. The tears gathered in her eyes and she wiped them away, burying her face in the handkerchief she held in one of her hands.

Thomas insisted. "You have seen him in that condition hundreds of times, have you not?"

There was a malicious note in his voice this time, as well as in the look he directed at the old man at the table.

Millie caught it, and a slight antagonism crept into her voice as she straightened in her chair, answering, in surprise, "Why, I never counted."

Thomas was deriving a long-desired satisfaction in his prodding of Bill, and it threatened his shrewder self-control. "But he was in the habit of coming home drunk, wasn't he?" There was real glee in the question, but it escaped Millie this time. With a beseeching glance at Thomas, and one which pleaded for forgiveness toward Bill, she said, slowly, "Sometimes."

"And because of the poverty brought about by those bad habits you were obliged to leave—"

Here Millie broke in. Forgetting her embarrassment and the crowded court-room in the realization that words were being put into her mouth, words which fell far short of the truth, she burst out, indignantly: "Why, I never said any such thing! I went away to work because there was no opportunity in Calivada to earn any money, and I thought as long as I was going at all I might just as well go to San Francisco where I could make a salary large enough to take care of myself and to help Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who have been very good to me."

Thomas saw that he had overstepped himself and he groped in his mind for new questions, until a scowl from Hammond reminded him that it might be better to stop rather than to bring out evidence which might turn against them and in favor of Bill. So he dismissed Millie from the stand.

She stood up while Thomas took his place next to Hammond at the table. But Marvin, after a few whispered words with Bill, took Thomas's place by the witness-chair, holding up a detaining hand and calling, "Miss Buckley!"

Millie glared at him, blushed deeply, and walked off the stand. She had not been able to forgive him for his advice to Bill and still held him responsible for Bill's leaving home, as she had felt that if Bill had not been prejudiced against Thomas and Hammond the place would have been sold and they would have all been living together in comfort.

But she did not get very far. As she left the platform Townsend motioned her to return and, submerging his personal friendship for her beneath his judicial duties he exclaimed, severely:

"One moment, Miss Buckley. The counsel for the defense has asked you a question."

Millie turned her back on Marvin as she dropped into the chair again. A smile played on Marvin's lips, but it was a rueful one. To come thus face to face with her in a situation where he was compelled to be her antagonist in order to see that justice was done to his old friend was not a happy ordeal for him.

Townsend knew what was going on between the young people and he felt keenly for them, but it was a part of him to hold to his duty always and not to his own personal biases. His severity did not relax even when Millie pouted: "I don't want to answer his questions! Must I?"

The people in the court-room, interested and amused at the unusual dÉnouement, went into a peal of laughter which received swift check from the sheriff's gavel. She flushed violently and obeyed Judge Townsend's admonishment that she must answer all of Marvin's questions.

Marvin's first inquiry did not tend to make things any easier for her.

"Who employed you as a stenographer?" he asked. His back was turned to Thomas, but he could feel the latter shifting in his chair.

Finding no mercy in Townsend's manner, she succumbed to the inevitable, snapping, with a toss of her head, "Mr. Thomas!"

"This Mr. Thomas?" Marvin asked.

"Yes," said Millie. There had been nothing in her heart but deepest misery and shame at having to testify against Bill during her examination by Thomas. Now she was fired by a resentment against Marvin, Bill being forced out of the equation. Her answers came in a swift defiance that bespoke a determination to make it as difficult for him as possible. Marvin, seeing at once that she and Mrs. Jones were still plastic in the hands of Thomas and Hammond, was tempted into battle.

"Did Mr. Thomas," he asked, "give you this position because you told him you wanted to be of financial assistance to the Jones family?"

Millie opened her mouth to reply, but Thomas was on his feet at once, objecting to the question.

Facing the judge, Marvin ignored Thomas, saying, "I am quite willing to withdraw it if it is found objectionable, your Honor."

Thomas stepped quickly to Marvin's side. He was a few inches the taller and he glared down at Marvin, who stared back, his jaw set in the resolution to stand firm against the man he knew to be a fraud.

That he was standing on thin ice Thomas knew, and he knew also that bluff was the only feasible strategy to employ against the unforeseen crisis wrought by Bill's sudden and unexpected arrival. "Don't flatter yourself that I mind any question you might ask," he emphasized, "only this one has no bearing on the case."

At this, Townsend sustained the objection. Marvin, resorting to a legal trick, changed the form of the question, for he was bound to prove his point. "Well, Miss Buckley," he asked, "Mr. Thomas has taken an interest in your affairs and given you advice?"

The insinuation was more than Millie could bear calmly. She turned quickly, meeting his eyes in anger as she flashed a significant smile toward Thomas.

"Mr. Thomas has been more than kind to me always. He has given me advice when I had no one else to turn to."

"And you have always followed his advice?"

Following his key, Millie replied, "Always, implicitly, in spite of what others—" and she paused long enough to send a pointed shaft Marvin's way—"have said against him."

Marvin grinned and continued, "Miss Buckley, you have never known Mr. Jones to be cruel or even unkind to his wife, have you?"

An objection from Thomas was overruled, the judge contending that cruelty was one of the grounds in the complaint. As he had forgotten how the question read, he asked the stenographer to repeat it. Millie answered in the negative and Marvin prodded her further, "You have never seen him unkind to any one or anything, have you?"

Gentleness had always been such an ever-present quality in Bill's treatment of Millie that she forgot her anger for the moment and hastened to reply, as she smiled sweetly at Bill, "Daddy has always been most kind to me and every one else."

This was an opportunity to lead her into an admission which might immediately quash all of the grounds of the complaint. Marvin saw it at once and took advantage of it. "Now, Miss Buckley," he argued, "the complaint asks for a divorce on the grounds of drunkenness, failure to provide and cruelty. In all honesty you know that not one of these is the real reason that Mrs. Jones has asked for a divorce, don't you?"

Unused to the ways of the law and its peculiar methods of arriving at conclusions, Millie was perplexed. The only excuse in her mind for the divorce had been that it would bring about the sale of the property and that Mrs. Jones would thereby have sufficient money with which to find Bill, which would mean happiness for the three of them. Had Thomas not intervened with an objection which the judge sustained, she would have given her answer, but as it was she remained silent.

Marvin, determined to prove Bill Jones's simple sweetness, so that he would at least be understood by the world, went to his purpose again.

"Miss Buckley, you know that Mr. Jones loved his wife, loved her devotedly, don't you?" he asked.

Townsend beamed in judicial humor upon Marvin and laughed. "How can she know that? That's not an astute question for a lawyer to ask, and I don't sanction such methods."

The question, however, had brought back a certain softness in Millie's attitude. Forgetting for the moment her dislike of Marvin, she smiled, but to regret it and to efface the smile with a frown.

His examination of Millie had been difficult for Marvin. Into his mind had crowded old memories—happy walks along the cliff in San Francisco, afternoons in Golden Gate Park, and days in the office when he had dared to hope that some day she might learn to care. His heart leaped at the thought of moonlight strolls in the mountain woods and along the shores of the lake. Those were days when she had interested herself in his plans and it all came back to him with desperate force as her unintentional smile awakened a poignant longing within him. A whirlwind of reminiscent emotion caught him in its teeth.

"If it please your Honor," he said, his eyes shining, "there is one thing that a woman does know, and that is whether a man loves her or not! She may believe a man to be a contemptible liar. She may say that she will hate and despise him always, but somehow down in her heart, if he really loves her, she knows it!"

Forgetting that there was such a place as a court-room, or that he was defending a divorce suit against Bill Jones, all he saw was the scorn in the eyes of the girl he loved. All he felt was that he was fighting single-handed against overwhelming odds for his own happiness. He leaned close to the witness-chair and looked into the girl's eyes, and she, seeing in his eyes the thing that she had tried to forget through all the long and sorrowful months, turned away from him, lest she should betray the longing that lurked in her own heart. But Marvin's fervid plea flamed higher and higher and he went on:

"If a woman is a man's ideal—if he would gladly lay down his life for her—she knows it and no matter what she says about him or what anybody else says about him the knowledge that he cares more for her than for anything else in the entire universe must count for something, and I contend, your Honor—"

He got no farther. The whole court-room was in roars of laughter and the sheriff's gavel was knocking loudly on his table. Millie, unable to bear the situation any longer, was sobbing aloud. Townsend arose quickly and, leaning over his desk, shook a warning finger at Marvin.

"Hold on there!" he called, half in humor and half in anger. "Are you trying a divorce case or are you making love?"

The laughter in the court-room began again, but subsided, for there was something in the situation that struck deep into the hearts of the spectators and they knew that, grotesque as it might appear, shattered romance was stalking before them.

Marvin, himself once again, lowered his voice and pleaded, apologetically: "I beg your pardon, your Honor. I did not mean to go so far." Smiling sadly at Millie, he added, "That is all, Miss Buckley."

"I should say it is quite enough!" satirized the judge. "I think we had better get back to business."

Without looking at Marvin, Millie left the stand and took her seat beside her mother. Thomas called Everett Hammond as the next witness.

Hammond, although outwardly nonchalant, was inwardly ill at ease. Marvin's appearance in court followed so closely by Bill's arrival was a contact that puzzled him. Millie's hesitancy as a witness was another feature which he felt was not altogether in favor of the cause of the Golden Gate Land Company. During her testimony he had kept close watch of her mother, who several times wept audibly, burying her face in her handkerchief. He knew that he and Thomas were playing a close game and that the slightest contradiction in his testimony might set Mrs. Jones to thinking in the wrong direction; especially with Bill Jones in the court-room, his eyes divided between the witness-stand and his wife. He assumed an air of bravado as he took the stand, glaring down at Marvin, who was seated not far from him and who was smiling blandly upon him.

Preliminaries over, Thomas launched into Hammond's direct examination. "How long have you known Mr. and Mrs. Jones?" he asked.

"I met them first," Hammond answered, pausing to think, "about seven months ago."

"Kindly tell the court how you happened to meet them."

Hammond, looking at the judge, answered: "I was asked to consider the purchase of a piece of property belonging to Mrs. Jones. I had some other business near by and stopped off at the Joneses' place."

"What was the other business?" was Thomas's next question. He glanced at Marvin, who met his look with straightforward, unswerving eyes, which turned Thomas's attention to his witness.

"The Pacific Railroad," said Hammond, scowling at Marvin, "was being robbed of timber in that locality and they sent me with the sheriff," he nodded toward Blodgett, who flushed at the memory of that embarrassing incident, "to arrest the thief."

"Who was the thief?" There was triumph in Thomas's voice as he asked the question.

"His name is John Marvin."

"Since that time, you have had dealings with Mrs. Jones, have you not?"

"I have, and I have always found her to be an honest and splendid woman." Hammond smiled over at her.

"And Mr. Jones was a source of trouble and great embarrassment to her, wasn't he?"

This time Hammond made Bill the goal of his insulting focus. "Yes, sir, he was! He was shiftless and drinking, cruel and untruthful." With a malicious sneer he added, "Why, to my knowledge, he's the biggest liar in the county!"

All this time, without a word, Bill had been sitting on the edge of his chair, accepting the testimony against him in the same indifferent manner in which he met most of life's difficulties. Hammond's last remark proved to be the first telling blow at his equanimity. It was too much! This Hammond person had called him, Bill Jones, a liar! In Lightnin's code, shrunken and old though he was, there could be but one answer. Calmly and quietly Bill stood up and began to draw his faded blue coat from his bent old shoulders.