trouble and anxiety about her horses, was, yes, it
was superb: there's no other word for it. Ah, poor girl!"

"Your sister's presence will be a great help to her," said Wade. "It was
very good of her to come."

"Ah, there wasn't anything else for it," said Matt, flinging his head
up. "Louise has my father's loyalty. I don't know much about her
friendship with Miss Northwick--she's so much younger than I, and they
came together when I was abroad--but I've fancied she wasn't much liked
among the girls, and Louise was her champion, in a way. When Louise read
that report, nothing would do but she must come."

"Of course."

"But our being here must have its embarrassments for my father. It was a
sacrifice for him to let us come."

"I don't understand."

"It was he who carried through the respite the directors gave Northwick;
and now he will have the appearance before some people of helping to
cover up the miserable facts, of putting a good face on things while a
rogue was getting away from justice. He might even be supposed to have
some interest in getting him out of the way."

"Oh, I don't think any such suspicion can attach itself to such a man as
Mr. Hilary," said Wade, with a certain resentment of the suggestion even
from the man's son.

"In a commercial civilization like ours any sort of suspicion can attach
to any sort of man in a case like this," said Matt.

Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "I can't realize that the
case is what you say. I can't realize it at all. It seems like some poor
sort of play, of make-believe. I can't forgive myself for being so
little moved by it. We are in the presence of a horror that ought to
make us uncover our heads and fall to our knees and confess our own sins
to God!"

"Ah, I'm with you _there_!" said Matt, and he pushed his hand farther
through his friend's arm.

They were both still well under thirty, and they both had that zest for
mere experience, any experience, that hunger for the knowledge of life,
which youth feels. In their several ways they were already men who had
thought for themselves, or conjectured, rather; and they were eager to
verify their speculations through their emotions. They thought a good
deal alike in many things, though they started from such opposite points
in their thinking; and they both had finally the same ideal of life.
Their intimacy was of as old a date as their school days; at Harvard
they were in the same clubs as well as