ty bearing of the widow's son.

"He's longing for a run over the hills," said she. "He told me he was."

"A year of it in there would kill him," the colonel said. "We must get
him a lawyer who can disentangle him. I never saw anybody go down like
that boy has gone down in the last month. It's like taking a wild Indian
out of the woods and putting him in a cage."

The colonel put aside the corn picture for the day, and went out to
confer with Judge Burns, a local lawyer who had gained a wide reputation
in the defense of criminal cases. He was a doubly troubled man when he
returned home that evening, for Joe had been firm in his refusal either
to dismiss Hammer or admit another to his defense. In the library he had
found Alice, downcast and gloomy, on the margin of tears.

"Why, honey, you mustn't mope around this way," he remonstrated gently.
"What is it--what's gone wrong with my little manager?"

She raised up from huddling her head against her arms on the table,
pushed her fallen hair back from her eyes and gave him a wan smile.

"I just felt so lonely and depressed somehow," said she, placing her
hand on his where it lay on the table. "Never mind me, for I'll be all
right. What did he say?"

"Judge Burns?"

"Joe."

The colonel drew a chair near and sat down, flinging out his hand with
impatient gesture.

"I can't do anything with him," said he. "He says one lawyer will do as
well as another, and Hammer's doing all that can be done. 'They'll
believe me or they'll not believe me, colonel, and that's all there is
to it,' says he, 'and the best lawyer in the world can't change that.'
And I don't know but he's right, too," the colonel sighed. "He's got to
come out with that story, every word of it, or there'll never be a jury
picked in the whole State of Missouri that'll take any stock in his
testimony."

"It will be a terrible thing for his mother if they don't believe him,"
said she.

"We'll do all that he'll allow us to do for him, we can't do any more.
It's a gloomy outlook, a gloomy case all through. It was a bad piece of
business when that mountain woman bound him out to old Isom Chase, to
take his kicks and curses and live on starvation rations. He's the last
boy in the world that you'd conceive of being bound out; he don't fit
the case at all."

"No, he doesn't," said she, reflectively.

"But don't let the melancholy thing settle on you and disturb you,
child. He'll get out of it--or he'll not--o