d. I saw. The young
Whiting had not fired at all.

"I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me. 'Come with me, _mon
Rafe_,' I called. 'I, too, am guilty. I would have killed him in the
night. Come with me. We will escape. The fire will cover all. None
will ever know but you and me, and I am guilty as you. Come.'

"But he did not hear. And I wished him to hear. Oh! I wished him at
least to hear me say that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not
wish to be separated from him in this world or the next.

"But he ran back always into the path of the fire, for those other
men, the old M'sieur Beasley and the others, were closing behind him
and the fire."

She was speaking freely of the fire now, but it did not matter. Her
story was told. The big, hot tears were flowing freely and her voice
rose into a cry of farewell as she told the end.

"Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over him. Oh, the great God,
who is good, was cruel that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and
running on again. Then the fire shut him out from my sight, and God
took him away.

"That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and was safe."

Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of the
story. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in its
naive and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human nature
to understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easily
her own unthought, clipped expressions than they would any more
connected elaborations he might try to make her give.

Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always been
a useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced of
the guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring into
court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a
personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case.
But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl's story was
true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But it
was true.

His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing.
The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leading
nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury.

It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember the
facts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to put
aside the girl's dramatic story. He was still convinced that the
prisoner was guil