against Providence, even against the man she loved. Why should he
sacrifice both their lives, become an outcast himself to shield a boy,
who in a moment of weakness had committed an act which might surely be
forgiven if he would but admit his mistake? yes, it might even be called
a mistake. The punishment accepted in heroic silence by Mortimer was
out of all proportion to the wrong-doing. It meant the utter ruin of two
lives. Firmly as she believed in his innocence, a conviction was forced
upon her that unless Alan stood forth and boldly proclaimed the truth
the accumulated guilt--proof would cloud Mortimer's name, perhaps until
his death. Even after that his memory might linger as that of a thief.

The evening before Alan had been at Ringwood and Allis had made a final
endeavor to get him to clear the other's name by confessing the truth
to Crane. On her knees she had pleaded with her brother. The boy had
fiercely disclaimed all complicity, protested his own innocence with
vehemence, and denounced Mortimer as worse than a thief in having
poisoned her mind against him.

In anger Alan had disclosed Mortimer's treachery--as he called it--and
crime to their mother. Small wonder that Allis's hour of trial was a
dark one. The courage that had enabled her to carry Lauzanne to victory
was now tried a thousandfold more severely. It seemed all that was left
her, just her courage and faith; they had stood out successfully against
all denunciation of Lauzanne, and, with God's help, they would hold her
true to the man she loved.

Even the pace of a snail lands him somewhere finally, and the unassailed
Bay, with a premonition of supper hovering obscurely in his lazy mind,
at last consented to arrive at Ringwood.

Allis crept to her father like a fearsome child avoiding goblins.
Providentially he had not been initiated into the moral crusade against
the iniquitous Mortimer, so the girl clung to him as a drowning person
might to a plank of salvation. She longed to tell him everything--of her
love for Mortimer, perhaps he had guessed it, for he spoke brave words
often of the sturdy young man who had saved her from Diablo. Perhaps she
would tell him if she felt her spirit giving way--it was cruel to stand
quite alone--and beseech him, as he had faith in her, to believe in her
lover.

Allis went to the tea table by her father's side, fearing to get beyond
his hearing; she dreaded her mother's questioning eyes. What could be
said in