Jessica left the jail with despair in her heart. The hope on which she had fed these past days had failed her. What was there left for her to do? Like a swift wind she went up the street to Felder's office.

A block beyond the court-house a crowd was enjoying the watery discomfiture of Hallelujah Jones, and shrinking from recognition even in the darkness—for the arc lights were still black—she crossed the roadway and ran on to the unpretentious building where the lawyer had his sanctum. She groped her way up the unlighted stair and tapped on the door. There was no answer. She pushed it open and entered the empty outer room, where a study lamp burned on the desk.

A pile of legal looking papers had been set beside it and with them lay a torn page of a newspaper whose familiar caption gave her a stab of pain. Perhaps the news of the trial had found its way across the ranges, to where the names of Stires and Moreau had been known. Perhaps every one at Aniston already knew of it, was reading about it, pitying her! She picked it up and scanned it hastily. There was no hint of the trial, but her eye caught the news which had played its rÔle in the court-room, and she read it to the end.

Even in her own trouble she read it with a shiver. Yet, awful as the fate which Harry Sanderson had so narrowly missed, it was not to be compared with that which awaited Hugh, for, awful as it was, it held no shame!

In a gust of feeling she slipped to her knees by the one sofa the room contained and prayed passionately. As she drew out her handkerchief to stanch the tears that came, something fell with a musical tinkle at her feet. It was the little cross she had found in front of the hillside cabin, that had lain forgotten in her pocket during the past anxious days. She picked it up now and held it tightly in her hand, as if the tangible symbol brought her closer to the Infinite Sympathy to which she turned in her misery. As she pressed it, the ring at the top turned and the cross parted in halves. Words were engraved on the inside of the arms—a date and the name Henry Sanderson.

The recurrence of the name jarred and surprised her. Hugh had dropped it—an old keepsake of the friend who had been his beau idÉal, his exemplar, and whose ancient influence was still dominant. He had clung loyally to the memento, blind in his constant liking, to the wrong that friend had done him. She looked at the date—it was May 28th. She shuddered, for that was the month and day on which Doctor Moreau had been killed—the point had been clearly established to-day by the prosecution. To the original owner of that cross, perhaps, the date that had come into Hugh's life with such a sinister meaning, was a glad anniversary!

Suddenly she caught her hand to her cheek. A weird idea had rushed through her brain. The religious symbol had stood for Harry Sanderson and the chance coincidence of date had irresistibly pointed to the murder. To her excited senses the juxtaposition held a bizarre, uncanny suggestion. This cross—the very emblem of vicarious sacrifice!—suppose Harry Sanderson had never given it to Hugh! Suppose he had lost it on the hillside himself!

She snatched up the paper again: "Who has been for some months on a prolonged vacation"—the phrase stared sardonically at her. That might carry far back—she said it under her breath, fearfully—beyond the murder of Doctor Moreau! Her face burned, and her breath came sharp and fast. Why, when she brought her warning to the cabin, had Hugh been so anxious to get her away, unless to prevent her sight of the man who was there—to whom he had taken her horse? Who was there in Smoky Mountain whom he would protect at hazard of his own life? Yet in this crisis, even, her appeal to his love had been fruitless. He had called Harry Sanderson his closest friend, had said that in his place Harry would do the same. She remembered his cry: "What you ask is the one thing I can not do. It would make me a pitiful coward!" She had asked only that he tell the truth. To protect a vulgar murderer was not courageous. But what if they were bound by ties of old friendship and college camaraderie? Men had their standards.

Jessica's veins were all afire. A rector-murderer? A double career? Was it beyond possibility? At the sanatorium she had re-read The Mystery of Edwin Drood; now she thought of John Jasper, the choir-master, stealing away from the cathedral to the London opium den to plan the murder of his nephew. The mad thought gripped her imagination. Harry Sanderson had been wild and lawless in his university days, a gamester, a skeptic—the Abbot of the Saints! To her his pretensions had never seemed more than a graceful sham, the generalities of religion he spread for the delectation of fashionable St. James only "as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." He had been a hard drinker in those days. What if the old desire had run on beneath the fair exterior, denied and repressed till it had burst control—till he had fled from those who knew him, to Hugh, in whose loyalty he trusted, to give it rein in a debauch? Say that this had happened, and that in the midst of it Moreau, whom he had known in Aniston, had come upon him. Anticipating recognition, to cover his own shame and save his career, in drunken frenzy perhaps, he might have fired the shot on the hillside—that Moreau, taken unawares, had thought was Hugh's!

It came to her like an impinging ray of light—the old curious likeness that had sometimes been made a jest of at the white house in the aspens. Moreau and Prendergast had believed it to be Hugh! So had the town, for the body had been found on his ground! But on the night when the real murderer came again to the cabin—perhaps it was his coming that had brought back the lost memory!—Hugh had known the truth. In the light of this supposition his strained manner then, his present determination not to speak, all stood plain.

What had he meant by a debt of his past that he had never paid? He could owe no debt to Harry Sanderson. If he owed any debt, it was to his dead father, a thousand times more than the draft he had repaid. Could he be thinking in his remorse that his father had cast him off—counting himself nothing, remembering only that Harry Sanderson had been David Stires' favorite, and St. James, which must be smirched by the odium of its rector, the apple of his eye?

Jessica had snatched at a straw, because it was the only buoyant thing afloat in the dragging tide; now with a blind fatuousness she hugged it tighter to her bosom. The joints of her reasoning seemed to dovetail with fateful accuracy. She was swayed by instinct, and apparent fallacies were glozed by old mistrust and terror of the outcome which was driving her to any desperate expedient. Beside Hugh's salvation the whole universe counted as nothing. She was in the grip of that fierce passion of love's defense which feeds the romance of the world. One purpose possessed her: to confront Harry Sanderson. What matter though she missed the remainder of the trial? She could do nothing—her hands were tied. If the truth lay at Aniston she would find it. She thought no further than this. Once in Harry Sanderson's presence, what she should say or do she scarcely imagined. The horrifying question filled her thought to the exclusion of all that must follow its answer. It was surety and self-conviction she craved—only to read in his eyes the truth about the murder of Moreau.

She suddenly began to tremble. Would the doctors let her see him? What excuse could she give? If he was the man who had been in Hugh's cabin that night, he had heard her speak, had known she was there. He must not know beforehand of her coming, lest he have suspicion of her errand. Bishop Ludlow—he could gain her access to him. Injured, dying perhaps, maybe he did not guess that Hugh was in jeopardy for his crime. Guilty and dying, if he knew this, he would surely tell the truth. But if he died before she could reach him? The paper was some days old; he might be dead already. She took heart, however, from the statement of his improved condition.

She sprang to her feet and looked at her chatelaine watch. The east-bound express was overdue. There was no time to lose—minutes might count. She examined her purse—she had money enough with her.

Five minutes later she was at the station, a scribbled note was on its way to Mrs. Halloran, and before a swinging red lantern, the long incoming train was shuddering to a stop.