o you know the prisoner?"

"He is my foster-uncle."

"Were you at home on the night of August the tenth?"

"I was."

"Have you ever heard the prisoner express any enmity against this
volunteer Police Guard?" He waved his hand toward the men at the
portholes and about the railing--unconsciously leaving his hand directly
pointed at Hale. June hesitated and Rufe leaned one elbow on the table,
and the light in his eyes beat with fierce intensity into the girl's
eyes into which came a curious frightened look that Hale remembered--the
same look she had shown long ago when Rufe's name was mentioned in the
old miller's cabin, and when going up the river road she had put her
childish trust in him to see that her bad uncle bothered her no more.
Hale had never forgot that, and if it had not been absurd he would have
stopped the prisoner from staring at her now. An anxious look had come
into Rufe's eyes--would she lie for him?

"Never," said June. Ah, she would--she was a Tolliver and Rufe took a
breath of deep content.

"You never heard him express any enmity toward the Police Guard--before
that night?"

"I have answered that question," said June with dignity and Rufe's
lawyer was on his feet.

"Your Honour, I object," he said indignantly.

"I apologize," said the deep voice--"sincerely," and he bowed to June.
Then very quietly:

"What was the last thing you heard the prisoner say that afternoon when
he left your father's house?"

It had come--how well she remembered just what he had said and how, that
night, even when she was asleep, Rufe's words had clanged like a bell in
her brain--what her awakening terror was when she knew that the deed was
done and the stifling fear that the victim might be Hale. Swiftly her
mind worked--somebody had blabbed, her step-mother, perhaps, and what
Rufe had said had reached a Falin ear and come to the relentless man in
front of her. She remembered, too, now, what the deep voice was saying
as she came into the door:

"There must be deliberation, a malicious purpose proven to make the
prisoner's crime a capital offence--I admit that, of course, your
Honour. Very well, we propose to prove that now," and then she had
heard her name called. The proof that was to send Rufe Tolliver to the
scaffold was to come from her--that was why she was there. Her lips
opened and Rufe's eyes, like a snake's, caught her own again and held
them.

"He said he was going over to the Gap--"

There was