NE morning, a week later, Pole Baker slouched down the street from the wagon-yard, and, peering into the law-office of Garner & Dwight, he stood undecided on the deserted street, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his baggy trousers. He took another surreptitious look. Garner was at his desk, his great brow wrinkled as with concentrated thought, his coarse hair awry, his coat off and shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his fingers stained with ink. Glancing up at this moment, he caught the farmer's eye and nodded: “Hello!” he said, cordially; “come in. How's our young colt running out your way?”

“Like a shot out of a straight-barrelled gun,” Baker retorted. “He's the most popular man in the county. He had a slow start, in all that nigger mess, but he's all right now.”

“So you think he'll be elected?” Garner said, as Pole sat down in a chair near his desk and began to twirl his long, gnarled fingers.

“Well, I didn't say that, exactly,” the farmer answered.

“But you said—” In his perplexity the lawyer could only stare.

“I reckon thar are lots of things in this life that kin keep fellows out of offices besides the men runnin' agin 'em,” Baker said, significantly.

The eyes of the two men met in a long, steady stare; each was trying to read the other. But Garner was too shrewd a lawyer to be pumped even by a trusted friend, and he simply leaned back and took up his pen. “Oh yes, of course,” he observed, “a good many slips betwixt the cup and the lip.”

Silence fell between the two men. Baker broke it suddenly and with his customary frankness. “Look here, Bill Garner,” he said. “That young feller's yore partner an' friend, but I've got his interests at heart myself, an' it don't do no harm sometimes fer two men to talk over what concerns a friend to both. I come in town to talk to somebody, an' it looks like you are the man.”

“Oh, that's it,” Garner said. “Well, out with it, Baker.”

Pole thrust his right hand into his pocket and took out a splinter of soft pine and his knife. Then, with the toe of his heavy shoe, he drew a wooden, sawdust-filled cuspidor towards him and over it he prepared to whittle.

“I want to talk to you about Carson,” he said. “It ain't none o' my business, Bill, but I believe he's in great big trouble.”

“You do, eh?” and Garner seemed to throw caution to the winds as he leaned forward, his great, facile mouth open. “Well, Pole?”

“Gossip—talk under cover from one mouth to another,” the mountaineer drawled out, “is the most dangerous thing, next to a bucket o' powder in a cook-stove that you are goin' to bake in, of anything I know of. Gossip has got hold of Dwight, Bill, an' it's tangled itself all about him. Ef some'n' ain't done to choke it off it will git him down as shore as a blacksnake kin swallow a toad after he's kivered it with slime.”

“You mean—” But Garner seemed to think better of his inclination towards subterfuge and broke off.

“I mean about the way Dan Willis met his death,” Pole said, to the point. “I'm no fool an' you ain't, at least you wouldn't be ef you was paid by some client to git at the facts. Folks are ready to swear Carson was seed the day that thing happened on that road inside of a mile o' whar Willis was found. You know what time Carson left here that day; it was sometime after dinner, an' the hotel man at Spring-town says he got thar an' registered after dark. He says, too, that Carson looked nervous an' upset an' seemed more anxious to avoid folks than the general run of vote-hunters. Then—then, oh, well, what's the use o' beatin' about the bush? You know an' I know that Carson hain't been actin' like himself since then. It's all we can do to git 'im interested in his own popularity, an' that shows some'n' is wrong—dead wrong. An' it looks to me like it is a matter that ought to be attended to. Killin' a man is serious enough in the eyes of the law without covering it up till it's jerked out of you by the State solicitor.”

“So you think the two men met?” Garner said, now quite as if he were inquiring into the legal status of any ordinary case.

“That's my judgment,” answered Pole. “And if I'm right, then it seems to me that Carson an' his friends ought to take action before—”

“Before what?” Garner prompted, almost eagerly. “Before the grand jury takes it up, as you know they will have to with all this commotion goin' the rounds.”

“Yes, Carson ought to act—concerned in it or not,” said Garner. “If something isn't done right away, it might be sprung on him on the very eve of his election and actually ruin him.”

“I'm worried, an' I don't deny it,” said the mountaineer. “You see, Bill, Carson's a lawyer, and he knows whether he had a good case of self-defence or not, an' shirking investigation this way looks powerful like—”

“Like he was himself the—aggressor,” interpolated Garner, with a frown.

“Yes, like that,” said Baker. “Of course we know Willis was houndin' the boy and making threats, but Carson's hot-headed, as hot-headed as they make 'em, an' maybe he flared up at the first sight of Willis an' blazed away at 'im. I don't see no other reason for him lyin' so low about it.”

“I'm glad you came to me,” Garner said. “I'll admit I've been fearing the thing, Pole. It will be a delicate matter to broach, but I'm going to talk to him about it. As you say, the longer it remains like it is the more serious it becomes. Good Lord! if he did kill Willis—if he did kill him, it would take sharp work to clear him of the charge of murder after the silly way he has acted about it. Why, dang it, it's almost an admission of guilt!”

Baker had barely left the office when Carson came in, nodded to his partner, and sat down at his desk and began in an absent-minded way to cut open some letters that were waiting for him. Unobserved Garner watched him from behind the worn book he was holding up to his face. Hardened lawyer that he was, Garner's heart melted with pity as he noted the dark splotches under the young man's eyes, the pathetic droop of his shoulders, the evidences in every facial line of the grim inward struggle that was going on in the brave, supersensitive soul. Garner put down his book and went into the little consultation-room in the rear and stood at the window which looked out upon a small patch of corn in an adjoining lot.

“He did it!” he said, grimly. “Yes, he did it. Poor chap!”

The task before him was the hardest Garner had ever faced. He could have discussed, to the finest points of detail, such a case for a client, but Carson—the strange, winning personality over which he had marvelled so often—was different. He was the most courageous, the most self-sacrificing, the most keenly suffering human being Garner had ever known, and the most sensitively honorable. How was it possible, even indirectly, to allude to so grave a charge against such a man? And yet, Garner reflected, pessimistically, the best of men sometimes reach a point at which their high moral and spiritual tension, under one crucial test or another, breaks. Why should it not be so in Carson Dwight's case.

Garner went back to his desk, sat down, and turned his revolving-chair till he faced Carson's profile. “Look here, old chap,” he said. “I've got something of a very unpleasant nature to say to you, and it's a pretty hard thing to do, considering my keen regard for you.”

Dwight glanced up from the letter he held before him. He read Garner's face in a steady stare for a moment, and then said, with a sigh, as he laid the letter down: “I see you've heard it. Well, I knew it would get out. I've seen it coming for several days.”

“I began to guess it a week or so back,” Garner went on, outwardly calm; “but this morning in talking to Pole Baker I became convinced of it. It is a grim sort of thing, my boy, but you must not despair. You've surmounted more obstacles than any young fellow I know, and I believe you will eventually come through this. Though you must acknowledge that it would have been far wiser to have given yourself up at once.”

“I couldn't do it,” Carson responded, gloomily. “I thought of it. I started on my way to Braider, really, but finally decided that it wouldn't do.”

“Good God! was it as bad as that?” Garner exclaimed. “I've been hoping against hope that you could—”

“It couldn't be worse.” Carson lowered his head till it rested on his hand. His face went out of Garner's view. “It's going to kill her, Garner. She can't stand it. Dr. Stone told me that another shock would kill her.”

“You mean—my Lord! you mean your mother? You—you”—Garner leaned forward, his face working, his eyes gleaming—“you mean that you did not report it because of her condition? Great God! why didn't I think of that?”

“Why, certainly.” Carson looked round. “Did you think it was because—”

“I thought it was because you had—had killed him in—well, in a manner you feared would not be adjudged wholly justifiable. I never dreamed of the real reason. I see it all now,” and Garner rose from his chair and with his lips twitching he laid his hand on Dwight's back. “I understand perfectly, and I admire you more than I can say. Now, tell me all about it.”

For an hour the two friends sat talking together. Calmly Carson went into detail as to the happening, and when he had finished Garner said: “You've got a good case, but you can easily see that it is grievously hampered by your concealment of the facts so long. To make a jury see exactly how you felt about your mother's reception of the thing may be hard, for the average man is not by nature quite so finely strung as that, but we must make them see it. Dr. Stone's testimony as to his advice to you will help. But, by all means, we must make the advance ourselves as soon as possible—before a charge is brought against you by the grand jury.” v “But”—and Dwight groaned aloud—“my mother simply cannot go through it, Garner. I know her. It will kill her.”

“She simply must bear it,” Garner said, gloomily. “We must find a way to brace her up to the ordeal. I have it. All my hopes are based on our making such a clear statement before Squire Felton, with the testimony of several witnesses as to Willis's threats against you, that he will throw it out of court. I can see the squire to-day and have a hearing set for to-morrow. We'll make quick work of it. I'll also see your father and—”

“My father!” Carson exclaimed, despondently.

“Yes, I'll see him and explain the whole thing. I think I can get him to keep the matter from reaching your mother till after the hearing. She is still confined to her room, and surely your father can manage that part of it.”

“Yes,” Carson replied, gloomily; “and he will do all he can, though it's going to be a terrible blow to him. But—if—if the justice court should bind me over, and I should have to go to jail to await trial, then my mother—”

“Don't think about her now!” Garner said, testily. “Let's work for a prompt dismissal and not look on the dark side till we have to. I'll run down and talk to your father at once, before the rumor reaches him and drives him crazy. I tell you it's in the very air; I've felt it for several days.”