“And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall not only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could have done the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouths of his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes, actual eye-witnesses of the crime.”

In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald Mountain.

From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the hill people who had come down for this, the second day 211 of the trial. Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. Judge Leslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made it plain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogers must have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge the guilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder itself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had been doing at the time.

For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killed just a mile or so within the line of Racquette County. Only a little of the extreme southeastern corner of that county had been burned over in the recent fire and in general it had meant very little to these people. In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which had suffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossible to select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayer of Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villages of Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew that a man had been killed up the corner of the county. A forest fire had started at about the same time and place. But few people had any clear version of the story. And there seemed to be little doubt as to the identity of the slayer.

There was another and far more potent reason why it was unfortunate for Jeffrey Whiting that Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the bench was the same man who only a few weeks before had pleaded so unctuously before the Senate committee for the rights of the downtrodden U. & M. Railroad against the lawless people of the hills. He had given the District Attorney every possible assistance toward the selection of a jury who would be at least thoughtful of the interests of the railroad. For this was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people of the hills against the U. & M. Railroad.

Racquette County was a “railroad” county. The life of every one of its rising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroad system that had spread itself beneficently over the county and that had given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of the North. Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad, and it was not in the disposition or the plans of the railroad to leave the county in a position where it might forget the debt. So the railroad saw to it that only men personally known to its officials should have public office in the county. It had put this judge upon this bench. And the railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid him well for the very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it.

The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life of Racquette County was so complex and varied that it extended to every money-making affair in the community. It was an intangible but impenetrable mesh of interests and influences that extended in every direction and crossed and intercrossed so that no man could tell where it ended. But all men could surely tell that these lines of influence ran from all ends of the county into the hand of the attorney for the railroad in Alden and that from his hand they passed on into the hands of the single great man in New York whose money and brain dominated the whole transportation business of the State. All men knew, too, that those lines passed through the Capitol at Albany and that no man there, from the Executive down to the youngest page in the legislative corridors, was entirely immune from their influence.

Now the U. & M. Railroad had been openly charged with having procured the setting of the fire that had left five hundred hill people homeless in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would, of course, be impossible to bring the railroad to trial on such a charge in any county of the State. The company had really nothing to fear in the way of criminal prosecution. But the matter had touched the temper and roused the suspicions of the great, headless body called the public. The railroad felt that it must not be silent under even 214 a muttered and vague charge of such nature. It must strike first, and in a spectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a counter charge.

Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the Grand Jury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictment against Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers. They had found that Samuel Rogers was an agent of the railroad engaged upon a peaceable and lawful journey through the hills in the interests of his company. He had been found shot through the back of the head and the circumstances surrounding his death were of such a nature and disposition as to warrant the finding of a bill against the young man who for months had been leading a stubborn fight against the railroad.

The case had been advanced over all others on the calendar in Judge Leslie’s court, for the railroad was determined to occupy the mind of the public with this case until the people should have had time to forget the sensation of the fire. The mind at the head of the railroad’s affairs argued that the mind of the public could hold only one thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put this murder case into that mind and keep it there until some new thing should arise.

The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had been brought to trial; the well-oiled smoothness with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had done its work, and the efficient way in which judge 215 and prosecuting attorney had worked together for the selection of what was patently a “railroad” jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident power was moving its forces to an assured and definite end. This judge and this jury would allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in the way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught in the act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it to appear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury as justification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. The fate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whether or not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would be allowed to enter.

And on that question it seemed that the minds of all men were already made up. The prisoner’s friends and associates in the hills had been at first loud in their commendation of the act which they had no doubt was his. Now, though they talked less and less, they still did not deny their belief. It was known that they had congratulated him on the very scene of the murder. What room was there in the mind of any one for doubt as to the actual facts of the killing? And since his conviction or acquittal must hinge on that single question, what room was there to hope for his acquittal?

The hill people had come down from their ruined homes, where they had been working night 216 and day to put a roof over their families before the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen and nervous. They had no doubt whatever that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and they had been forced to come down here to tell what they knew––every word of which would count against them. They had come down determined that he should not suffer for his act, which had been done, as it were, in the name of all of them. But the rapid certainty in which the machinery of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved them. There was nothing for them to do, it seemed, but to sit there, idle and glum, waiting for the end.

Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the opening arraignment by the District Attorney. He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of circumstances which had begun to wrap itself around him that morning on Bald Mountain had never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold upon him. He had followed his friends that day and all of that night and had reached Lowville early the next day. He had found his mother there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom, but had been horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing had turned back into the face of the fire in an effort to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No word had been had of either of them. He had told his mother exactly what had happened in the hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He 217 had wished to do so. But another had fired before he did. He had not, in fact, used his gun at all. She had believed him implicitly, of course. Why should she not? If he had actually shot the man he would have told her that just as exactly and truthfully. But Jeffrey was aware that she was the only person who did or would believe him.

He was just on the point of mounting one of his mother’s horses, to go up into the lower hills in the hope of finding Ruth wandering somewhere, when he was placed under arrest for the murder of Rogers. The two men who had escaped down the line of the chain had gotten quickly to a telegraph line and had made their report. The railroad people had taken their decision and had acted on the instant. The warrant was ready and waiting for Jeffrey before he even reached Lowville.

When he had been taken out of his own county and brought before the Grand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he might have had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost. Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever he was, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. His own friends who had been there at hand would not believe his oath.

His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in the front seats just to the right of him. From time to time he turned to smile reassuringly at them with a confidence that he was far from feeling. 218 His mother smiled back through glistening grey eyes, all the while marking with a twinge at her heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep into the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she was thinking of the morning, just a few months ago when her little boy, suddenly and unaccountably grown to the size of a tall man, had been obliged to lift up her face to kiss her. He was going down into the big world, to conquer it and bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness of everything but his own plans of conquest, which is at once the pride and the heart-stab of every mother with her man child, he had kissed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told––that he would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again. And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie with him.

Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heart in her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trail of evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them. Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had she been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, the thought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of the hills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heart of her was very near to hating 219 even the dead as she thought of her boy brought to this pass because of that man.

Ruth Lansing had come twice to the county jail in Danton with his mother to see Jeffrey. They had not been left alone, but she had clung to him and kissed him boldly as though by her right before all men. The first time he had watched her sharply, looking almost savagely to see her shrink away from him in pity and fear of his guilt, as he had seen men who had been his friends shrink away from him. But there had been not a shadow of that in Ruth, and his heart leaped now as he remembered how she had walked unafraid into his arms, looking him squarely and bravely in the eyes and crying to him to forget the foolish words that she had said to him that last day in the hills. In that pulsing moment Jeffrey had looked into her eyes and had seen there not the love of the little girl that he had known but the unbounded love and confidence of the woman who would give herself to him for life or death. He had seen it; the look of all the women of earth who love, whose feet go treading in tenderness and undying pity, whose hands are fashioned for the healing of torn hearts.

It was only when she had gone, and when he in the loneliness of his cell was reliving the hour, that he remembered that she had scarcely listened to his story of the morning in the hills. Of 220 course, she had heard his story from his mother and was probably already so familiar with it that it had lost interest for her. But no, that was not like Ruth. She was always a direct little person, who wanted to know the exact how and why of everything first hand. She would not have been satisfied with anybody’s telling of the matter but his own.

Then a horrible suspicion leaped into his mind and struck at his heart. Could it be that she had over-acted it all? Could it be that she had brushed aside his story because she really did not believe it and could not listen to it without betraying her doubt? And had she blinded him with her pity? Had she acted all––!

He threw himself down on his cot and writhed in blind despair. Might not even his mother have deceived him! Might not she too have been acting! What did he care now for name or liberty, or life itself! The girl had mocked him with what he thought was love, when it was only––!

But his good sense brought him back and set him on his feet. Ruth was no actress. And if she had been the greatest actress the world had ever seen she could not have acted that flooding love light into her eyes.

He threw back his head, laughing softly, and began to pace his cell rapidly. There was some other explanation. Either she had deliberately put his story aside in order to keep the whole of 221 their little time together entirely to themselves, or Ruth knew something that made his story unimportant.

She had been through the fire herself. Both she and the Bishop must have gone straight through it from their home in its front line to the rear of it at French Village. How, no one could tell. Jeffrey had heard wild tales of the exploit–– The French people had made many wonders of the coming of these two to them in the hour of their deliverance, the one the Bishop of their souls, the other the young girl just baptised by Holy Church and but little differing from the angels.

Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire might have revealed to one or both of these two as they went through it. Perhaps there were other men who had not been accounted for. Then he remembered Rafe Gadbeau. He had been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey at Rogers’ command. Might it not be that the bullet which killed Rogers was intended for Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in the line of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing him squarely and the bullet had struck Rogers fairly in the back of the head.

Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed some sort of mysterious hold over Rafe Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding unwillingly, under a pressure of fear. What if 222 Gadbeau there under the excitement of the fire, and certain that another man would be charged with the killing, had decided that here was the time and place to rid himself of the man who had made him his slave!

The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and, pacing his cell, stopping between mouthfuls of his food as he sat at the jail table, sitting up in his cot in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey caught at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact that would fit into the story as it must have happened. He wandered into many blind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he at last came upon the truth––and stuck to it.

Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and had almost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruth and the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence. He had confessed. The Catholics always told the truth when they were going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had heard him. Ruth knew. The Bishop knew.

When Ruth came again, he watched her closely; and saw––just what he had expected to see. Ruth knew. It was not only her love and her confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering, torturing doubts that must sometimes, unbidden, rise to frighten even his mother. Ruth knew.

That she should not tell him, or give him any 223 outward hint of what she was hiding in her mind, did not surprise him. It was a very serious matter this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter with anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man. Ruth would not speak unnecessarily of it. When the proper time came, and there was need, she would speak. For the present––Ruth knew. That was enough.

When the Bishop came down from Alden to see him, Jeffrey watched him as he had watched Ruth. He had never been very observant. He had never had more than a boy’s careless indifference and disregard of details in his way of looking at men and things. But much thinking in the dark had now given him intuitions that were now sharp and sensitive as those of a woman. He was quick to know that the grip of the Bishop’s hand on his, the look of the Bishop’s eye into his, were not those of a man who had been obliged to fight against doubts in order to keep his faith in him. That grip and that look were not those of a man who wished to believe, who tried to believe, who told himself and was obliged to keep on telling himself that he believed in spite of all. No. Those were the grip and the look of a man who knew. The Bishop knew.

It was even easier to understand the Bishop’s silence than it had been to see why Ruth might not speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret. 224 He must not speak of such things without a very serious cause. But, of course, there was nothing in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent man. Of course, when the time and the need came, the Bishop would speak.

So Jeffrey had pieced together his fragments of fact and deduction. So he had watched and discovered and reasoned and debated with himself. He had not, of course, said a word of these things to any one. The result was that, while he listened to the plans which his lawyer, young Emmet Dardis, laid for his defence––plans which, in the face of the incontestable facts which would be brought against them, would certainly amount to little or nothing––he really paid little attention to them. For, out of his reasoning and out of the things his heart felt, he had built up around himself an inner citadel, as it were, of defence which no attack could shake. He had come to feel, had made himself feel, that his life and his name were absolutely safe in the keeping of these two people––the one a girl who loved him and who would give her life for him, and the other a true friend, a man of God, a true man. He had nothing to fear. When the time came these two would speak. It was true that he was outwardly depressed by the concise and bitter conviction in the words of the prosecuting attorney. For Lemuel Squires was of the character that makes the most terrible of criminal prosecutors––an 225 honest, narrow man who was always absolutely convinced of the guilt of the accused from the moment that a charge had been made. But inwardly he had no fear.

The weight of evidence that would be brought against him, the fact that his own best friends would be obliged to give their oaths against him, the very feeling of being accused and of having to scheme and plan to prove his innocence to a world that––except here and there––cared not a whit whether he was innocent or guilty, all these things bowed his head and brought his eyes down to the floor. But they could not touch that inner wall that he had built around himself. Ruth knew; the Bishop knew.

The rasping speech of the prosecutor was finished at last.

Old Erskine Beasley was the first witness called.

The prosecuting attorney took him sharply in hand at once for though he had been called as a witness for the prosecution it was well known that he was unwilling to testify at all. So the attorney had made no attempt to school him beforehand, and he was determined now to allow him to give only direct answers to the questions put to him.

Two or three times the old man attempted to explain, at the end of an answer, just why he had gone up into the high hills the night before the twentieth of August––that he had heard that 226 Rogers and a band of men had gone into the woods to start fires. But he was ordered to stop, and these parts of his answers were kept out of the record. Finally he was rebuked savagely by the Judge and ordered to confine himself to answering the lawyer’s questions, on pain of being arrested for contempt. It was a high-handed proceeding that showed the temper and the intention of the Judge and a stir of protest ran around the courtroom. But old Erskine Beasley was quelled. He gave only the answers that the prosecutor forced from him.

“Did you hear a shot fired?” he was asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you hear two shots fired?”

“No.”

“Did you see Jeffrey Whiting’s gun?”

“Yes.”

“Did you examine it?”

“Yes.”

“Had it been fired off?”

“Yes.”

“Excused,” snapped the prosecutor. And the old man, almost in tears, came down from the stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers had made the most damaging sort of evidence.

Then the prosecutor went back in the story to establish a motive. He called several witnesses who had been agents of the railroad and associated 227 in one way or another with the murdered man in his efforts to get options on the farm lands in the hills. Even these witnesses, though they were ready to give details and opinions which might have been favorable to his side of the case, he held down strictly to answering with a word his own carefully thought out questions.

With these answers the prosecutor built up a solid continuity of cause and effect from the day when Rogers had first come into the hills to offer Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself right up to the moment when the two had faced each other that morning on Bald Mountain.

He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to undermine and oppose Rogers’ work from the first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of a family well known and trusted in the hills. The young man had been quick to grasp the situation and to believe that he could keep the people from dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers’ work would then be a failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then be pointed to as the only man who could get the options from the people. They would sell or hold out at his word. The railroad would have to deal with him direct, and at his terms.

Jeffrey Whiting had gotten promises from many of the owners that they would not sell or even sign any paper until such time as he gave them the word. Did those promises bind the people to him? They did. Did they have the 228 same effect as if Jeffrey Whiting had obtained actual options on the property? Yes. Would the people stand by their promises? Yes. Then Whiting had actually been obtaining what were really options to himself, while pretending to hold the people back in their own interest? Yes.

The prosecutor went on to draw out answer after answer tending to show that it was not really a conflict between the people and the railroad that had been making trouble in the hills all summer; that it was, in fact, merely a personal struggle for influence and gain between Jeffrey Whiting and the man who had been killed. It was skilfully done and drawn out with all the exaggerated effect of truth which bald negative and affirmative answers invariably carry.

He went on to show that a bitter hatred had grown up between the two men. Rogers had been accused of hiring men to get Whiting out of the way at a time in the early summer when many of the people about French Village had been prepared to sign Rogers’ options. Rogers had been obliged to fly from the neighbourhood on account of Whiting’s anger. He had not returned to the hills until the day before he was killed.

The people in the hills had talked freely of what had happened on Bald Mountain on the morning of August twentieth and in the hills during the afternoon and night preceding. The prosecutor knew the incidents and knew what men 229 had said to each other. He now called Myron Stocking.

“Did you meet Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon of August nineteenth?” was the question.

“I went lookin’ for him, to tell––”

“Answer, yes or no?” shouted the attorney.

“Yes,” the witness admitted sullenly.

“Did you tell him that Rogers was in the hills?”

“Yes.”

“Did he take his gun from you and start immediately?”

“He followed me,” the witness began. But the Judge rapped warningly and the attorney yelled:

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see Rogers in the morning?”

“Yes, he was settin’ fire to––” The Judge hammering furiously with his gavel drowned his words. The attorney went on:

“Did you hear a shot?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear two shots?”

“The fire”––was making a lot of noise, he tried to say. But his voice was smothered by eruptions from the court and the attorney. He was finally obliged to say that he had heard but one shot. Then he was asked:

“What did you say when you came up and saw the dead man?”

“I said, ‘Mine got away, Jeff.’”

“What else did you say?”

“I said, ‘What’s the difference, any of us would’ve done it if we had the chance.’”

“Whiting’s gun had been fired?” asked the attorney, working back.

“Yes.”

“One question more and I will excuse you,” said the attorney, with a show of friendliness––“I see it is hard for you to testify against your friend. Did you, standing there with the facts fresh before you, conclude that Jeffrey Whiting had fired the shot which killed Rogers?”

To this Emmet Dardis vigorously objected that it was not proper, that the answer would not be evidence. But the Judge overruled him sharply, reminding him that this witness had been called by the prosecution, that it was not the business of opposing counsel to protect him. The witness found himself forced to answer a simple yes.

One by one the other men who had been present that fatal morning were called. Their answers were identical, and as each one was forced to give his yes to that last fateful question, condemning Jeffrey Whiting out of the mouths of his friends who had stood on the very ground of the murder, it seemed that every avenue of hope for him was closing.

On cross-examination, Emmet Dardis could do little with the witnesses. He was gruffly reminded by the Judge that the witnesses were not his, that he must not attempt to draw any fresh stories from them, that he might only examine them on the facts which they had stated to the District Attorney. And as the prosecutor had pinned his witnesses down absolutely to answers of known fact, there was really nothing in their testimony that could be attacked.

With a feeling of uselessness and defeat, Emmet Dardis let the last witness go. The State promptly rested its case.

Dardis began calling his witnesses. He realised how pitifully inadequate their testimony would be when placed beside the chain of facts which the District Attorney had pieced together. They were in the main character witnesses, hardly more. They could tell only of their long acquaintance with Jeffrey Whiting, of their belief in him, of their firm faith that in holding the people back from giving the options to Rogers and the railroad he had been acting in absolute good faith and purely in the interests of the people. Not one of these men had been near the scene of the murder, for the railroad had planned its campaign comprehensively and had subpoenaed for its side every man who could have had any direct knowledge of the events leading up to the tragedy. As line after line of their testimony was 232 stricken from the record, as being irrelevant, it was seen that the defence had little or no case. Finally the Judge, tiring of ruling on the single objections, made a general ruling that no testimony which did not tend to reveal the identity of the man who had shot Rogers could go into the record.

Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden sat anxiously watching the course of the trial. Beside him sat little Father Ponfret from French Village. The little French priest looked up from time to time and guardedly studied the long angular white head of his bishop as it towered above him. He did not know, but he could guess some of the struggle that was going on in the mind and the heart of the Bishop.

The Bishop had come down to the trial to give what aid he could, in the way of showing his confidence and faith, to the case of the boy who stood in peril of his life. In the beginning, when he had first heard of Jeffrey’s arrest, he had not thought it possible that, even had he been guilty of actually firing the shot, Jeffrey could be convicted under such circumstances. Men must see that the act was in defence of life and property. But as he listened to the progress of the trial he realised sadly that he had very much underestimated the seriousness of the railroad people in the matter and the hold which they had upon the machinery of justice in Racquette County.

He had gladly offered to go upon the stand and tell the reason why Jeffrey Whiting had entered into this fight against the railroad. He would associate himself and his own good name with the things that Jeffrey Whiting had done, so that the two might stand before men together. But he now saw that it would be of no avail. His words would be swept aside as irrelevant.

One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. This morning on his arrival in Danton, the Bishop had been angered at learning that the two men whose lives he had saved that night by the lake at French Village had escaped from the train as they were being brought from Lowville to Danton to testify at this trial.

Whether they could have told anything of value to Jeffrey Whiting was not known. Certainly they were now gone, and, almost surely, by the connivance of the railroad people. The Bishop had their confession in his pocket at this minute, but there was nothing in it concerning the murder. He had intended to read it into the record of the trial. He saw that he would not be allowed to do so.

One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey Whiting would be condemned to death, unless, within the hour, a man or woman should rise up in this room and swear: Jeffrey Whiting did not kill Samuel Rogers. 234 Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or––He told me so.

The Bishop remembered how that day last winter he had set the boy upon this course which had brought him here into this court and into the shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey Whiting had actually fired the shot that had cut off a human life, would not he, Joseph, Bishop of Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility? He would.

And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of his own, but through a chain of circumstances, stood now in danger of death, was not he, Joseph Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst of these circumstances, in a way responsible? He was.

Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this court and saying: “Rafe Gadbeau killed Samuel Rogers––He told me so”––could he thus save Jeffrey Whiting from a felon’s fate? He could. Nine words, no more, would do.

And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and did not do what was necessary––did not speak those nine words––would he, Joseph Winthrop, be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment and ruin of Jeffrey Whiting? He would.

Then what would Joseph Winthrop do? Would he speak those nine words? He would not.

There was no claim of life or death that had the force to break the seal and let those nine words escape his lips.

There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision in the Bishop’s mind as he sat there waiting for his name to be called. He loved the boy who sat there in the prisoner’s stand before him. He felt responsible for him and the situation in which he was. He cared nothing for the dead man or the dead man’s secret, as such. Yet he would go up there and defy the law of humanity and the law of men, because he was bound by the law that is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal salvation of men’s souls.

But there was no reasoning, no weighing of the issue in his mind. His course was fixed by the eternal Institution of God. There was nothing to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was caught between the greater and the lesser law and he could only stand and be ground between the working of the two.

If he had reasoned he would have said that Almighty God had ordained the salvation of men through the confession of sin. Therefore the salvation of men depended on the inviolability of the seal of the confessional. But he did not reason. He merely sat through his torture, waiting.

When his name was called, he walked heavily forward and took his place standing beside the chair that was set for him.

At Dardis’ question, the Bishop began to speak freely and rapidly. He told of the coming of Jeffrey Whiting to him for advice. He repeated what he had said to the boy, and from that point went on to sketch the things that had been happening in the hills. He wanted to get clearly before the minds of the jurymen the fact that he had advised and directed Jeffrey Whiting in everything that the boy had done.

The Judge was loath to show any open discourtesy to the Bishop. But he saw that he must stop him. His story could not but have a powerful effect upon even this jury. Looking past the Bishop and addressing Dardis, he said:

“Is this testimony pertinent?”

“It is, if Your Honor pardon me,” said the Bishop, turning quickly. “It goes to prove that Jeffrey Whiting could not have committed the crime charged, any more than I could have done so.”

The Bishop did not stop to consider carefully the logic or the legal phraseology of his answer. He hurried on with his story to the jury. He related his message from Albany to Jeffrey Whiting. He told of his ride into the hills. He told of the capture of the two men in the night at French Village. They should be here now as witnesses. They had escaped. But he held in his hand a written confession, written and sealed by a 237 justice of the peace, made by the two men. He would read this to the jury.

He began reading rapidly. But before he had gotten much past the opening sentences, the Judge saw that this would not do. It was the story of the plan to set the fire, and it must not be read in court.

He rapped sharply with his gavel, and when the Bishop stopped, he asked:

“Is the murder of Samuel Rogers mentioned in that paper?”

“No, Your Honor. But there are––”

“It is irrelevant,” interrupted the Judge shortly. “It cannot go before the jury.”

The Bishop was beaten; he knew he could do no more.

Emmet Dardis was desperate. There was not the slightest hope for his client––unless––unless. He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask the Bishop this morning, if there was not some way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The Bishop stood waiting for his further questions. There might be some way or some help, thought Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was not a part of the real confession. He said quickly:

“You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?”

“I was.”

“What did he say to you?”

Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair, his eyes eager and confident. His heart shouting that here was his deliverance. Here was the hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!

The Bishop’s eyes fell upon the prisoner for an instant. Then he looked full into the eyes of his questioner and he answered:

“Nothing.”

“That will do. Thank you, Bishop,” said Dardis in a low, broken voice.

Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The light of confidence died slowly, reluctantly out of his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop had lied! He knew! And he had lied!

As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat, Ruth Lansing saw the terrible suffering of the spirit reflected in his face. If she were questioned about that night, she must do as he had done.

Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must I do that? Can I do that?

Oh! She had never thought it would come to this. How could it happen like this! How could any one think that she would ever stand like this, alone in all the world, with the fate of her love in her hands, and not be able to speak the few little words that would save him to her and life!

She would save him! She would speak the words! What did she care for that wicked man 239 who had died yelling out that he was a murderer? Why should she keep a secret of his? One night in the early summer she had lain all through the night in the woods outside a cabin and wished for a way to kill that man. Why should she guard a secret that was no good to him or to any one now?

Who was it that said she must not speak? The Catholic Church. Then she would be a Catholic no longer. She would renounce it this minute. She had never promised anything like this. But, on the instant, she knew that that would not free her. She knew that she could throw off the outward garment of the Church, but still she would not be free to speak the words. The Church itself could not free her from the seal of the secret. What use, then, to fly from the Church, to throw off the Church, when the bands of silence would still lie mighty and unbreakable across her lips.

That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up before her, and what she saw held her.

What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was not the dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not a poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony and fear of death.

What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What she saw was the soul of the 240 world giving up its sin into the scale of God from which––Heart break or world burn!––that sin must never be disturbed.

As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name, a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path. Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce, piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes which she had recognised for the first time that day at French Village––the terrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. And though the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words: Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.

How well that girl knew!

Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was always a chance that the dying man had said something to her.

“You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was brought to him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?”

“No, sir.”

Then he flashed the question upon her:

“What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was dying?”

Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve. The impact of the sudden, startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to what followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, a terrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and––relief. A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stood.

Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling. Again the inner citadel of his hope stood strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the word that would free him! Her love would set him free! It was the time. Ruth knew. He would rather have it this way. He was almost glad that the Bishop had lied. Ruth knew. Ruth would speak.

The words of that terrible scream went searing through Ruth’s brain and down into the very roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout them out to the ends of the earth!

But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear voice answered:

“Nothing.”

Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of the stand.

Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.

Ruth had lied!

The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and crushed him.