his
feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad.

He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them.

Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her
dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done
his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden.
But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful
words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this
grief.

He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into
the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered
the things of God and His world.

VII

THE INNER CITADEL

"And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute
satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and
with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August
twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a
long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered
man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall
not only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could have
done the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouths
of his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes,
actual eye-witnesses of the crime."

In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District
Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against
Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had
died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald
Mountain.

From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of
Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the
hill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial.
Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the
villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose
lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. Judge
Leslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made it
plain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogers
must have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge the
guilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder
itself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had been
doing at the time.

For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killed
just a mile or