As Mahala went intently and industriously about her work, she was doing a great deal of thinking. She was forced to the conviction that she had no real friends in the whole of the town who would pursue her with friendship, who would thrust themselves upon her and make an effort to force her to feel that all of the years of her life when she had tried to be reasonably considerate of the people with whom she came in contact, had not been wasted. Out of the wreck, she was left with her mother’s servant, whose roof now afforded shelter. There were times when she tried to think in a sort of dull daze what would have become of them had not that shelter been forthcoming. She looked at Jemima and found that she was loving her and clinging to her, giving to her at least a degree of the gratitude and the affection that should have gone to her mother.

As she bent to stitch linings and wrestled with contrary wirings, Mahala was forever busy at her problem, because she had a problem to face. She realized from the manner in which her mother had listened that she would be interested in repairing the house and moving to the bit of land that had fallen to them. But if she did this, she must either keep a working place in the village and go back and forth, or she must undertake to handle the land in such a way as to make a living from it. On this part of her problem Mahala was helpless. She knew nothing whatever of sowing and reaping, the rotation of crops; of gardening, of chickens, and of the raising of stock. The only thing she did know that she could turn to dollars and cents was the thing that she was doing. The only way in which she could procure even a small degree of comfort for her mother was to keep on with the work she really could do with assurance and with extremely profitable results.

With a sharp eye upon every detail of expense, she began deliberately to see how much she could save that might be laid away toward the repairing of the farm house. If she had a few minutes to read, she found that she was reading about land. If there was spare time in which Jemima came and sat beside her and tried to help her with the coarser part of her work, she constantly questioned her to learn what she knew about soil, poultry, and gardening.

One day she said to Jemima: “Old dear, how much of your life are you going to give to me? I want to know definitely how long I can depend on you.”

Jemima smiled at her.

“Now, my dear,” she said, “don’t be botherin’ your head about that. There’s only one thing on earth that could happen that would take me away from you.”

“You mean your son?” questioned Mahala.

“Yes,” said Jemima. “I mean my boy. He’s a fine, upstanding lad. From the time his father died till he could look out for himself, I took care of him. He’s a good boy; he’s got a good wife. He’s got a houseful of fine babies. As long as everything goes all right with them, I’m free to stay with you and do all I can for you, and if it’s goin’ to be any comfort to you, I want you to understand that’s what I mean to do.”

Mahala laid aside her work, and sitting on Jemima’s knee, she kissed her and smoothed her hair and told her how deeply she loved her, how sure she was of her friendship and sympathy. Then she went back to thinking who else there was that had proved a friend in her hour of need. After Jemima, Jason loomed large on her horizon. She had no positive knowledge, but she felt a certainty that he must be amplifying the baskets he delivered to her. She could hear him in the kitchen offering his services for any hard work requiring a man about the premises. Any new food that was sent to the grocery, she was comfortably certain would be advertised with sufficient samples for a meal for the three of them in her basket. Any errand she could delegate to him he seemed delighted to do for her. So Mahala was forced to realize, that outside of her home, the best friend she had in Ashwater was the son of her mother’s washerwoman.

Edith Williams had not been to see Mahala on a real, friendly, old-time visit since the day of her catastrophe. She had not been in her home upon any excuse for even a short period since the day of her marriage. Mahala had understood a great deal concerning that marriage. She had realized how hard it would be for Edith to come. She had scarcely expected that she would, and yet, when one is utterly stranded, altogether bereft, one will cling even to straws, and if there was a girl in the town who should have stood staunchly by Mahala, it was Edith Williams. Many times in a day there was a click of the latch of the gate at which Mahala lifted a busy head, and in the beginning, there frequently had been a rush of colour to her cheeks, a light in her eyes. As the weeks went by, very frequently she did not even take the trouble to raise her head. Life had reduced things to the certainty that any one entering her gate came to have a dress remodelled, a hat made over. The last straw was the desertion of Susanna of the outskirts, Susanna who had kept the embroidered petticoat. Thinking on this subject, Mahala fell into a mental habit of saying: “Even Susanna!”

In the beginning, Mahala forced her customers to realize quite all that she was worth to them. She did her work conscientiously and honestly. She could not be forced, in remodelling a dress, to make an extremely wide skirt and panniers for a fat woman; she would not put a narrow skirt and a long polonaise on a thin woman. She frequently required changes in hair dressing before she would make a hat for a customer. She flatly refused either to make a hat or to remodel a dress unless she were allowed to use her own taste. When her customers really learned what had happened to them under Mahala’s skilful fingers, they were compelled to admit that she had made such a great improvement in their appearance that they were in her debt.

When she had fully forced this realization upon them, Mahala began quietly but persistently to raise her prices. She did nothing but good work. She made her charge commensurate with the time and the labour she had expended. Gradually she began to teach the whole town how to make the most of their looks, of the material that they could afford to use. So it was only a few months until she was making a comfortable living for herself and for her mother, till she was slipping away small sums destined for the restoration of the old house.

One morning, one of her customers stopping for a word of gossip, told Mahala that Edith Moreland was a very sick woman. She was having great difficulty in breathing and was being frequently attacked with fainting spells, and the doctors had ordered an immediate change of climate. After the woman had gone, Mahala sat thinking. Some undiscovered malady always had preyed upon Edith. During the past year Mahala had hoped that she was better. This report seemed to indicate that she was not. As she bent above her work, Mahala was wondering what would constitute a change of climate. Where would they take Edith in the hope that she might escape a severe illness? She thought of Junior. She could picture his dismay at being bound to a woman who was ill. He had no stomach for people who were in pain and trouble; that Mahala thoroughly understood.

It was while she was pondering on these things that the grinding of wheels before her door caused her to look up, and to her deep surprise, she saw Mrs. Moreland alighting from her carriage and coming in. Mahala always had been sorry for Mrs. Moreland. She had recognized in her a woman who was trying to do what was right, to live an exemplary life before her community. Through her own distaste for the methods of Martin Moreland and Junior, she had arrived at a realizing sense of how frequently this same distaste must be in the mouth of a right-thinking woman who was trying to live with them daily.

She opened her door and admitted Mrs. Moreland quietly and with the self-possession which always had characterized her. It was evident that her visitor was very much perturbed. She refused to be seated.

Without preliminaries she said: “Mahala, Edith is very sick this morning. She can scarcely breathe. The doctor has said that her only chance depends upon getting her to another climate as promptly as possible. We have planned to start her South and she should go at once, but she positively refuses until she has at least a dress to travel in and a hat of the latest mode. Right away I thought of you. I want you to come and help me get her off as soon as possible.”

Mahala stood very still for a second, then she said quietly: “Thank you very much, Mrs. Moreland. For your sake I should like to do what you ask, but it is quite impossible. Mother is still confined to her bed and I never go from the sound of her voice. I’m always here in case she wants me. Surely there is some one else who can help you with Edith.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Moreland, “there are a number of people who could, but you know as well as I do that Edith wouldn’t touch what they did. She’s always sent away for her things and had her dresses made by that woman in Covington who works on a form from her measurements. There isn’t time to wait for her. It’s a matter of life and death, I tell you!”

“I’m sorry,” said Mahala, “but I can’t possibly come to your house to work. As I told you before, I don’t want to leave Mother, and in the next place, I can’t afford to miss the work that I might lose by being away.”

“So far as that is concerned,” said Mrs. Moreland, “of course, I’m willing to pay you for anything you might possibly lose through helping us to get Edith off. I can’t understand your refusal when you and Edith always have been the dearest friends.”

Mahala opened her lips and then she closed them. She looked at Mrs. Moreland intently.

“I had supposed,” she said gently, “that every one in Ashwater knew that I haven’t been overburdened with friends of late. When I was in a position where I could not go to my friends and they failed to come to me, I had not the feeling that it was my right to seek them afterward. I took their failure to appear as conclusive evidence that they were not my friends.”

“I scarcely think,” said Mrs. Moreland, “that such a criticism applies to me.”

“No,” said Mahala, “it does not. You did come, and you were kindness itself. But you happen to be the one woman in town from whose hands I could not accept kindness.”

“It seems to me,” said Mrs. Moreland, “that you’re not quite as big and as fine as I always have thought you if you allow anything that has happened to keep you from doing what you can to save a life. I’m sorry if you feel you have reason to blame Mr. Moreland or me for anything that happened concerning your father’s loss of his property. Certainly, you can’t feel that Edith had anything to do with it. She was your friend, and you were hers; and now she is ill and asking for you—such a little favour that you could so well grant—and you refuse. Mahala, I am surprised at you!”

It was on Mahala’s lips to tell Mrs. Moreland that she was quite welcome to be surprised or the reverse. That pride that had caused her father’s downfall was a lively part of her inheritance from him. It touched her pride that she should be accused of failing a friend when she was ill. Possibly it was her part to teach Edith the better way.

“If you put it in that light,” she said, “I’ll ask Mother. If she thinks she can spare me, I will come.”

She stepped to the bedroom and found her mother soundly sleeping. Upon her relaxed face there was a look of quiet and peace that was not present when her mental processes were working. Mahala imagined that she was better. She went out and explained the situation to Jemima.

“You go straight ahead,” said Jemima. “Go and do what they want, and then soak it to them good and proper. Make ’em pay fully three times what you would anybody else.”

Mahala gathered up her workbag, the implements she was accustomed to handling in her trade, and climbing into the carriage, was driven to the Moreland residence.

Her first day’s work progressed finely. She was given exquisite material that had been clumsily made to alter. With touches here and there Mahala could transform a dress into a garment expressing the height of the prevailing mode. The instincts of the artist awoke in her and she began her work with enthusiasm and growing confidence. Junior and his father did not appear. Edith was so ill that she only spoke to her when it was necessary to find out what she wanted done, and how she wanted it. When she left at night she took several hats with her to remodel. Until past midnight she was bending over them, changing, altering, then adding touches to heighten their attractiveness. When Edith sat up long enough to try them on in the morning, she was effusive in her gratitude.

An effort was being made to have her ready to leave on the noon train. She sat on a chair before the mirror where she could study the effect of the hats she tried on. Mahala was standing beside her fitting one upon which she was working, when Junior entered the room. He brought himself into immediate proximity with Mahala. He kissed Edith and made a great display of affection for her. He told her that his mother had finished packing her trunks and that everything would be ready for them to start on the noon train. He dropped into her lap, for safekeeping, a pocket book which he told her contained the money for their journey and also the money to pay Mahala when she had completed her work. He explained that he would be forced to return to the bank on some business matters that he must finish before they started.

Edith picked up the pocket book and returned it to him. She said: “Put it on the table in the parlour beside the coat that is laid out for me to wear.”

Junior took the pocket book and stood an instant holding it, and then he said to her: “Is there any one else in the house?”

Edith replied: “No, there is not.”

“All right,” said Junior, “I guess it will be safe then, but I’ll warn you to keep an eye on it. Father wants you to have every luxury while we’re away, and he nearly broke the bank when he filled that pocket book.”

He stepped into the parlour and laid the long bill book on the table where he had been told; returning immediately, he left by passing through the dining room and kitchen, stopping a minute to speak to the gardener who was at work in the back yard. He went out of the side gate, which opened into an alley used by the Morelands as a short cut to the bank, and there he encountered Rebecca Sampson.

Rebecca was coming down the alley, her well-filled market basket on her arm, her white flag flashing in the sunlight. When Junior saw her, he stopped short, seeming to be possessed with an idea. He paused in deep thought for a minute, and when Rebecca lowered the flag, crowded to the farthest width of the alley and started to pass him with forbidding countenance, he took off his hat and smiled at her in a friendly manner.

In an aggrieved voice he said to her: “Becky, I am surprised at you! How can such a beautiful woman as you are let other people see that you think I have a bad heart? How can you have a clean heart yourself, unless you forgive other people? I know I was wild when I was a boy, but I’m a married man now, a staid business man. I’ll never tease you again or allow the other boys to, if you’ll let me pass under your flag.”

Instantly, Rebecca relented. She held up the flag, since one of the greatest objects of her wrecked brain was to see any one, whosoever would, bow his head and reverently pass under it. That her old-time enemy and tormentor had promised never to tease her again, had asked the privilege of passing under the flag, delighted Rebecca so that she held the white emblem high and said an unusually long blessing as Junior Moreland bowed his head and passed under. Then he talked to her for a minute longer and hurried up the alley to the bank. Before he left the alley, he turned and watched Rebecca’s movements. When finally he saw her go from sight, he smiled to himself and hurried on his way.

Mahala put the finishing touches on the hat, and carrying it into the parlour, laid it beside the coat as Edith had told her to do. Returning to the living room, she closed the parlour door enough to conceal Edith from the view of any one who might enter the room, and began work on the front of the waist she was altering. When the waist was finished, her work was done. She gathered up her measures, her scissors, and began packing her workbag.

Edith watched her and into her selfish, indifferent heart there crept a pang of remembrance of the many happy times that they had enjoyed together as children.

She said to Mahala: “I can’t tell you how much I thank you for helping me out. I really am awfully sick. I suppose I shouldn’t have stopped a minute for anything, but I’m going to be better in a few days and I couldn’t endure the thought of being packed off where I might look like a rag to Junior.”

“You’re quite welcome,” said Mahala quietly. “I was glad to do anything I could for you.”

Edith hesitated. She opened her lips. She knew what she should say, but she had not quite the moral courage to say it. Seeing Mahala, with the joy of youth wiped from her face, with the dancing sparkle lost from her eyes, her delicate hands roughened through handling contrary material and the constant plying of her needle, hurt her. She wanted to open her arms and cry: “Mahala, forgive me! Let’s be friends again. When I come back, let’s be friends!”

Lacking moral courage, as she always had lacked it, what she did say was: “Junior said the money to pay you was in the pocket book he laid beside my coat. Will you hand it to me?”

Mahala swung open the door and stepped toward the table. Then she paused and said over her shoulder: “Why, Edith, the pocket book isn’t here. Mrs. Moreland must have taken charge of it.”

At that minute Mrs. Moreland entered from the dining room.

Edith said to her: “Mother, have you been in the parlour?”

Mrs. Moreland shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’m trying to help get a decent dinner on the table for you before you leave.”

“That’s strange,” said Edith. “There’s nobody else in the house, is there?”

“Not that I know of,” said Mrs. Moreland.

Immediately turmoil began. Edith asked Mahala if she had seen the pocket book when she entered the parlour with her hat, and Mahala replied that she had. It was lying in plain sight on the table beside the coat. No one else had been in the room. There was a hush; and then both the Moreland women focussed amazed, questioning eyes upon Mahala. Suddenly it occurred to her that as she was the only one known to have entered the room, they were looking accusingly at her. A gush of red from her outraged heart stained her face and then sank back and left it, by contrast, all the whiter.

Both hands clutched her workbag tightly and she cried to Edith: “It is not possible that you think I touched that pocket book?”

Edith replied slowly: “I don’t want to think that, Mahala. But since you’re the only person who’s been in the room, and since every one knows that you’ve been needing money so badly, I should say that, at least, it’s up to you to find it.”

Mahala lifted her head. All the pride of a long race of proud people was in her blood. Her voice was smooth and even as she said: “You’re quite mistaken, Edith. It is not ‘up to me’ to do anything except to receive the pay for the work I have done for you and then to go home.”

Edith’s smile was the most disfiguring her face had ever known. Seeing it, Mahala spoke further.

“We were not in a position to see who might have entered the room while I was working on your waist. If you want to search me, I am perfectly willing that you should satisfy yourself that I have not the pocket book before I leave the house.”

At this unfortunate juncture, Martin Moreland entered the room. Instantly, he sensed the tense situation and began asking questions. Edith reached out her hands to him and began to cry. Immediately, he rushed to Mahala, seized her roughly by the arm, and cried: “You’ll stay right here, my lady, till you’re searched from head to heels. You’ll not leave this house till that pocket book is discovered. It was crammed as full as it would hold with money for this journey.”

Edith immediately chimed in to explain that Junior had said that the purse contained a large amount of money when she had told him to put it with her coat. She had not been sitting where she could see in the other room, but there had been no sound, no one had opened or closed a door, no one had entered the parlour or passed down the hall. The pocket book must be in the room.

During the ensuing discussion, Junior came hurrying in to tell them that time was flying and that they had none to waste. His father and mother and Edith joined in excitedly explaining the situation to him.

Instantly, he went to Mahala, put his arm across her shoulders, and said to her in a voice filled with pity: “My poor little schoolmate, have death and misfortune driven you to this? If you needed money so badly, why didn’t you ask me? You know I would gladly have given it to you.”

Mahala sprang away from him, staring at him with tense, wide eyes.

Mr. Moreland straightened up.

“Junior,” he said sharply, “we haven’t time for any nonsense of that sort! Get yourself down town by the shortest cut and bring a policeman to search her.”

At this Mahala lifted her head. She said to Mr. Moreland: “No officer shall touch me. If it is your wish that I be searched, you may leave the room and Mrs. Moreland may satisfy herself and Edith that neither the pocket book nor the money is on my person.”

At this juncture Edith began to gasp for breath; then she collapsed on the sofa, declaring that she was dying. Mrs. Moreland spoke authoritatively for the first time: “No one is going to lay a finger on Mahala Spellman in this house,” she said. “Every one of you very well knows that she’s quite incapable of touching anything that doesn’t belong to her. If she says she did not touch that pocket book, she didn’t!”

Then she turned to Mahala and said to her: “Put on your hat, child, take your workbag, and go home.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Moreland,” said Mahala, and she started toward the door.

The elder Moreland stepped in front of her. He had worked himself into a rage. He declared that she should not leave the house carrying three thousand dollars with her. Junior agreed with him.

He said to his father: “This breaks my heart. What a dreadful thing that the loss of her money should have so undermined the principles of such a girl as we always have supposed Mahala to be!”

And then he turned to Mahala in direct appeal. “Mahala,” he begged, “please tell me where the pocket book is and you shall go free. All of us will agree never to mention it. You couldn’t possibly get away with stealing that amount of money.”

He extended his hands to her and pleaded with her to save herself while there was yet time.

“Mahala, you can’t do it! What are you thinking of?” he cried.

Mahala replied quietly: “I’m thinking of a threat you made only a few weeks ago to degrade me till even the dogs of Ashwater would not bark at me. I’m thinking that this is your first move in fulfilling that threat.”

Edith immediately recovered her breath. She sat erect and demanded: “Why should Junior have made such a horrible threat as that against you?”

Mahala answered: “Well, if Junior were like other men, I should advise you to ask him.”

Edith instantly turned to Junior. He went to her, forcing her to lie down, and begging her to calm herself. He turned to his father and said to him: “Take Mother and Mahala into the parlour. Shut the door. If this thing’s carried much further, it may kill Edith.”

The elder Moreland immediately obeyed.

As soon as they were left alone, Junior said to Edith: “You very well know how Mahala always hung around me and bothered me with her attentions, and there were times when she had me fooled into thinking she was the one I really cared for. But when I learned Commencement night how beautiful you really were, superior in every way to Mahala, and when I let you see it, right away she got ugly. She threatened to ruin our happiness when I told her that I meant to ask you to marry me.”

Instantly Edith put her arms around him and kissed him and comforted him. She turned against Mahala, saying: “She’s so plausible she could deceive St. Peter with her innocent face and her snaky airs. Go, and call a policeman. I don’t care if you do. Make her shell out all that money and then put her out of this house!”

The horrible scene ended on the entrance of the gardener with the policeman, who forcibly conducted a search of Mahala and her bag, and announced that neither the pocket book nor the money was on her. When Junior was told that the bill book could not be found, he said slowly: “She must have managed to hand it out of the front door to some one to take to her house for her. Cheer up, Dad, if it isn’t here, it’s there. You’ll find it all right!”

Martin Moreland then told the policeman to take Mahala to the station and detain her until he had time to swear out a warrant for her arrest and a permit to search her house. The policeman knew he had no right to detain Mahala without a warrant, but she did not, so he took her by the arm and started down the street with her toward the station.

As they reached the gate she said to him: “Will you kindly remove your hand from my arm? I’ve not the slightest intention of trying to escape.”

It was the officer’s first chance to display the depths of his nature to the girl against whom the venom of unsuccess in his heart had secretly been directed all her life. He deliberately tightened his grip until he felt her wince; he started walking so rapidly that every one was forced to notice that Mahala was in his custody, as he intended that they should. So the main street of the town stood gaping at the sight of Mahala being forcibly propelled in the direction of the station house by the village policeman.

In passing Peter Potter’s grocery they met Jason arranging a display of baskets outside the window. In despair Mahala caught his arm.

In a low voice she cried to him: “Jason! Jason! Junior has managed to make trouble for me! Run quick to Albert Rich’s office and ask him to hurry to the police station!”

A few minutes after her arrival, Martin Moreland entered. He was shaking with anger, white with emotion. Unhesitatingly he swore out a warrant charging Mahala with the theft of three thousand dollars, and also a search warrant for her home. He asked that she be required to furnish bail to cover the amount she was accused of having taken. Mahala was terrified; she was nauseated; but she tried to keep her head erect, tried to think.

She replied: “You very well know that I cannot.”

A few minutes later she was behind the bars of a cell allotted to the vagrants and the common drunks of the town. She stood erect in the middle of it, holding her skirts that they might not be contaminated. Then Albert Rich and Jason entered the building. The lawyer immediately began to arrange details for her release.

With his first understanding of the situation, Jason said: “I will furnish the money for her bail, but if it has to be cash, I’ll have to drive to Bluffport. I must draw it from the bank.”

He begged that Mahala be allowed to go home, even if the policeman must accompany her, till he could secure the money. This was refused, and Mahala was forced to remain in the cell until Jason could make the drive to Bluffport and return with the amount needed taken from his years of savings. During all that time Mahala stood waiting. She never spoke save to ask repeatedly for water; thirst seemed to be consuming her. It was three hours later that the cell door was unlocked. Mahala stepped out, and between her lawyer and Jason, entered a carriage and was driven home.

There she found the Senior Moreland and the police officer searching the house in detail; her mother again lying unconscious, having been brutally told of the trouble. Moreland’s complaint was formally lodged against Mahala and her trial was set, at her own request, almost immediately. In a daze she worked over her mother.

Jason and Albert Rich made frantic efforts. They exhausted every means possible to them to find whether any one had been seen around the Moreland house at that time. Most of the women in the town did their own work. It was near the noon hour that the pocket book had disappeared. All of the neighbours had been in their kitchens at the time. No one could be found who had seen any one upon the streets that was not a resident going about his business.

A few days later, in a dull daze, Mahala stood in the town court house and heard herself arraigned upon the charge of having stolen three thousand dollars from the residence of Martin Moreland. She listened to the readings of the depositions of Junior Moreland and his wife, who had left on the noon train as arranged on the day of the trouble. She listened to the harsh testimony of Martin Moreland. She saw him glare at his wife. She saw the cruel grip with which he clutched her arm as he pretended carefully to lead her to the witness stand. She saw the shrinking, cowering woman lift a blanched face to the judge, and having been sworn, she heard her testify to having seen her son enter the living room with the pocket book in his hand, to having been told by him what sum it contained as he passed through the kitchen where she was hurriedly preparing dinner. He had explained that the money to pay Mahala was to be taken from it and the remainder was for the expenses of his trip with Edith. She told of hearing his voice as he talked to the two women and of having spoken with him again as he passed back through the dining room and kitchen on the way out. She told of having seen him stand a minute in conversation with the gardener at the back door and then start on his way toward the alley gate to go back to the bank. She could testify to nothing else except entering the room when she had been called after the loss of the pocket book had been discovered.

Pressed by Albert Rich with the question: “Have you any theory, Mrs. Moreland, can you offer any explanation as to how that pocket book might have disappeared?” she hesitated, evidently suffering cruelly, then with dry lips she said: “I have not.”

And again Albert Rich asked her: “Is it your belief that Mahala Spellman, the daughter of Mahlon and Elizabeth Spellman, stole that money?”

She answered promptly: “It is not.”

Pressed again to explain how else it could have disappeared, she answered: “I do not know, but there must have been some other way.”

Then Mahala was asked if there was anything she wished to say. She took the stand and clearly and unwaveringly, she made her testimony. She detailed every occurrence simply and explicitly. She admitted having seen the pocket book, which she described, in Junior’s hands and again in the parlour lying where Edith had told him to place it, when she had been sent to lay the hat she had finished beside the coat. She stoutly denied having touched it.

Under skilful questioning by Albert Rich the facts were developed that it would have been possible for any one who knew that the money was there to have entered the hall quietly, either at the front or side door, and taken it away. In rebuttal the Morelands were prompt with the evidence that no one knew that the money was in the house except Junior and his father, both of whom were occupied at the bank at the time of its disappearance, and the people who had been in the Moreland home, each of whom could be accounted for. Mahala’s lawyer made much of the fact that the money could not be found upon her or in her home, and that she had not been from the sight of the Junior Mrs. Moreland except for the minute when she had laid the finished hat beside the coat.

Anticipating this testimony, Martin Moreland had packed the front seats of the courtroom with his followers. At this statement all of them laughed immoderately. There was confusion in the court. Mahala turned deliberately, and so standing, she slowly searched the room filled with faces on not one of which could she find real sympathy, compassion, or comfort save on the agonized white face of Jason gazing up at her. Then she studied the jury, man by man, and as she did so, she realized that the power and the wealth of Martin Moreland had been lavished upon it.

She turned to the judge, who had been a friend of her father, with whose children she had played, and who had known her all her life.

Unexpectedly, she flashed at him the question: “Judge Staples, do you truly believe that I stole that money?”

The judge leaned toward her with tears in his eyes.

He answered: “What I truly believe, Mahala, can be of no earthly value to you now. The only thing that can help you here with this accusation against you, is for the prosecutor to fail in proving that you took it.”

Mahala cried to him: “You know I cannot prove that I did not take it; but you know equally as well that he cannot prove that I did.”

Sorrowfully the old judge said: “In order to be cleared of this charge, Mahala, the prosecutor must fail to prove that you took the money.”

Her head bowed, Mahala stood thinking.

Finally she said to the judge and to the jury: “So far as I know, I am quite helpless. I have no proof to offer other than my own word. If you will not accept that I seem to be at your mercy. I beg that you will get through with this in the speediest manner possible.”

The judge closed the case by instructing the jury on the subject of “reasonable doubt” and sent them to agree on a verdict. After a day’s deliberation a verdict of disagreement was rendered. That jury had contained one man whom Martin Moreland dared not approach, a man who had convictions, and was above a price. He had obstinately refused to agree to finding Mahala guilty. He roundly scored the other men for their lack of penetration, of mercy, of honesty.

When Mahala heard the verdict, she quietly slid down in her seat and was taken home unconscious by her lawyer and Jason. When reason returned, many days later, she had to be told that the shock of the trial had driven her mother, in agony and doubt, to her long rest. There awaited Mahala this alleviation: Her case had been dismissed by the sympathetic judge. It was his feeling that the evidence was not sufficient to merit punishment on Mahala’s part. He told the lawyer for the prosecution that he must produce something more tangible than the mere fact that Mahala had been in the house at the time the purse was taken.

This knowledge came too late to be of material help to Mahala. When Jemima tried to tell her, she discovered from her bright eyes, her burning cheeks, and a quivering of her lips that she had developed a fever, and for weeks she lay scorching and babbling while Jemima and Doctor Grayson, with Jason in the background, worked over her.

In leaving the courtroom, Jason made an attempt to attack Martin Moreland. The banker was half expecting that something of the kind might happen. He had so surrounded himself with people craving his favour that the boy was not able even to reach him.

Then Jason felt the hand of Albert Rich on his arm and he heard his voice saying: “Don’t be a fool, Jason. You can’t get at him that way. You can’t help her that way. We must make a clean job of this even if it’s a long one. We’ve got to trace this thing out and find exactly how it happened. Every one knows there’s been some underhand work somewhere.”

When Jason became more controlled, he said to Albert Rich: “Isn’t it like Junior Moreland to make this horrible trouble and then disappear and leave his father to get through with the dirty work?”

“Yes,” said Albert Rich, “it’s exactly like Junior to do that very thing.”

“The day is coming,” said Jason, “and it’s coming very speedily, when I shall be forced to kill both of those slippery snakes.”

“Hush!” cautioned Albert Rich, “I tell you that when you say such things you make a fool of yourself. You must not let people hear you. If they did, and anything happened to either one of them, those who heard would remember and your day of trouble would come. In that case, you would cease to be of any help to Mahala.”

With scarcely a thought of food or sleep, completely neglecting his work, Jason got through the first days of Mahala’s illness. When he learned that it would be a thing of long duration, that it was an hourly fight that would stretch out for weeks, he saw that the best thing he could do was to find another woman to help Jemima and himself, to be on hand as frequently as possible in order that their every need might be quickly supplied. In this extremity Jason was so obsessed in helping with the fight for Mahala’s life that he had no time to pay any attention to any one else. If he had been paying attention, he might have seen that there was something of a turning in the tide of feeling concerning Mahala. There had been many people who, in the beginning, had accepted the thought that because of her father’s disaster and her need for money, she might have done this thing, even as Junior had pityingly suggested to every one he could before leaving.

But there were a number of people in the town, who, when they stopped to think for a few days, realized the fact that Mahala was not in financial extremity. Albert Rich had discovered a piece of land belonging to her, that with cleaning up and cultivation, might become valuable. Jemima was furnishing her a roof. With her own efforts she was earning a comfortable living for herself and her mother. It was these people who began saying, at first tentatively and later with confidence, that the whole thing was another piece of dirty work on the part of the Morelands; that it was quite impossible that the daughter of Mahlon and Elizabeth Spellman should be a common thief; that it was unthinkable that the little girl who had been reared among them with such fastidious care should have developed a moral nature that could so easily be broken down.

In the days that passed while Mahala lay muttering on her pillow, there were many people who began making the journey to her door, and the door was as far as any of them ever travelled. Right there the face of Jemima, as coldly graven as any face of stone, met them, and Jemima did not mince words.

She said to Mrs. Williams flatly: “You’re about three weeks too late. The time you ought to have come and made a stand and done something was before that damned trial. You let things go on and let her be tortured to the breakin’ point and now you want to know if there’s anything you can do! Let me tell you pretty flat that there ain’t! What Mahala needs right now is cold baths and any nourishment she can take, and the loving care of people who understand her and sympathize with her, and that she’s gettin’ from me. If any of the rest of the folks is meditatin’ comin’, at this time of the day, you can tell ’em from me that I wish they’d stay away. They’re takin’ up time and they’re usin’ strength that Mahala needs!”

She shut the door with all the emphasis she dared—but her consideration was solely for the girl lying in the room in which her mother had lain for such a long time before her. Her heavy hair was unbound and spread over the pillow. Her body lay quiet; her head kept rolling back and forth; her hands picked at the covers or twisted together, and from her lips there came constantly a plaintive murmur: Where were all her friends? Had she no friends anywhere in the world? Sometimes she spent hours trying to convince her father or her mother that she was not a thief. Sometimes she cried pitifully and begged the whole town to believe that it was impossible that she could have done the thing of which she was accused.

Presently, the greater part of the town began to believe this. Martin Moreland found he was meeting a look of cold questioning on the faces of men who always had been friendly. The pastor of the Presbyterian Church, of which he was a deacon, had entered his room at the bank and no one knew what took place behind the closed doors, but as he left the room, several customers in the bank had heard his voice distinctly as he said to Martin Moreland: “I have the feeling that the life of this girl is endangered. If it is to be saved, it is upon your head to discover the necessary evidence to save it.” That was repeated over the town, and there were many who came to feel the same way.

For once in her life Mahala was being the perfect lady that her mother had always exhorted her to be. She was lying still, having the typhoid fever, undoubtedly from germs she had accumulated in the county jail where she had drunk avidly to quench a consuming thirst while she waited for Jason—having it quietly, in a way that her mother would have highly approved had she been there to dictate exactly the manner in which a lady should have a fever.

Sitting on the back steps waiting to see if the opportunity to be of any service might arise, Jason said to Jemima early in Mahala’s illness: “I’ve been thinking. The money I put up for Mahala’s bail has been returned to me. I’ve a notion to take some of it and fix up her house in the country so that it will be ready for her to go to when she gets over this. There’s nobody here she’ll be interested in seeing. The change might give her something to think of, it might help her. How do you feel about it?”

“I think,” said Jemima, “that it would be the very thing. I’ll go with her and we’ll live together. We’ll raise chickens and calves and pigs and she’ll feel better, be stronger, than she would at what she’s been doin’.”

So the two conspirators began a plot that ended in Jason’s finding a new interest in life. He told Peter Potter what he was planning, and with his approval and his help, Jason went at the work of repairing the house and redeeming the piece of land that Mahlon Spellman had thought so worthless that he had even forgotten to mention that he ever had purchased it.