e because you have the requisite skill
as an attorney, but because you would give this case the devotion, the
insight, that are not to be bought with money. Now you know my terms;
shall I go to the district attorney?"

Silvia kissed her impulsively. "Yes, dear; go--go at once!" Her eyes
filled and her exquisite voice quivered with the strain of the emotion
she could no longer conceal. "Oh, Carroll, I'm glad to have you now;
come back to me afterward and tell me all about it!"

CHAPTER XVII

THE ARREST OF DR. JOHN EARL

Early the next morning Dr. John Earl was arrested for the murder of Emma
Bell and was remanded by the magistrate to The Tombs without bail to
await the action of the grand jury, which was soon to convene. Both he
and his family had foreseen the event, and he had made the necessary
arrangements for the conduct of his business. Humiliating as his arrest
was, they all bore it with Spartan courage, and prepared to ransack the
earth, if need be, to establish his innocence.

Leonora Kimball and her mother returned from Bar Harbor to find their
city friends almost unanimously arrayed against Dr. Earl, and they were
not themselves in the best humor with the tide of ill fortune that had
swept them into these muddy currents. They went immediately to The
Tombs, and in the interview that followed Dr. Earl insisted that Leonora
should consider herself released from her engagement so long as the
least taint was attached to his name in connection with this charge. She
protested that this was the hour of his need, and she could not think of
such a thing, but he caught the tone of doubt in her voice, and the lack
of genuine sympathy in her manner. There passed rapidly through his mind
the thought that the electric chair might be just ahead of him; a long
imprisonment might be his fate; he might lose the affection of friends
and the respect of strangers, but if in this hour of bitter ordeal,
guilty or innocent, whichever she might believe, his affianced wife did
not show supreme faith and devotion, he was indeed a beggar in the realm
of love. Carroll's ominous words about the malign stars that governed
her fate recurred to his mind, and he thought of his contest with
himself, and his decision when, defying the possibility of separation,
inharmony or divorce, he elected to keep his plighted troth whatever his
post-nuptial fate might be.

But in the recesses of his prison he had yearned for love, for the
divin