scared. Mr. Sterling done it, but paw was mad; he picked up Mr.
Sterling's gun and tried to kill 'im,--I saw it all. I was hid in the
sycamores. You hadn't ought to hang 'im or do anything to 'im: he
couldn't help it."

The prosecuting attorney smiled his broad, gilt-edged, comfortable
smile, and laid his pudgy hand reassuringly on Melissa's shoulder.

"It's all right, my little girl," he said. "We're not going to hang Mr.
Sterling this time; he was discharged this afternoon; but he'll be
obliged to you, all the same. He's over at the hotel taking a nap. You
just run along home, and the next time don't be afraid to tell what you
know."

The girl turned away silently, and went down the stairs and out into the
street. She stood still a moment on the hot pavement, looking in the
direction of the hotel in which the man for whom she had made her
fruitless journey was sleeping. Then she set her face patiently toward
home. The reflection from the pavement seemed to blind her; she felt
suddenly faint and tired, and it was with a great throb of relief that
she heard a familiar voice at her elbow, and turned with a little
tearless sob to Lysander.

VIII.

The Worthingtons' private parlor in the Rideau House was hot and close,
although a fog had drifted in at nightfall and cooled the outside air.
Two of its occupants, however, were totally unmindful of the heat and
the mingled odors of upholstery, gas, and varnish that prevailed within
its highly decorated walls. The third, a compact, elderly,
prosperous-looking gentleman, whose face wore a slight cloud of _ennui_,
stood by the open window gazing out, not so much from a desire to see
what was going on outside as from a good-natured unwillingness to see
what was taking place within.

Mr. Frederick Sterling, a shade paler and several shades graver than of
old, was looking at the elderly gentleman's daughter in an unmistakable
way; and the daughter herself, a fair creature, with the fairness of
youth and health and plenty, was returning his gaze with one that was
equally unmistakable.

"Do you mean to tell me, Frederick, that the poor thing _walked_ all
that distance in that intolerable heat?"

The young man nodded dismally.

"That's what they say, Annette. It makes one feel like a beast."

"I don't see why you need say that, Frederick. I'm sure they ought to
have done something, after the awful danger you were in." The young
woman swept toward him, with one arm outst