ad pocketed it. Afterwards came a blank.

He waked to find two officers of the law beside him, and the body of
Jean Gamache, stark and dreadful, a few feet away.

When the officers put their hands upon him he shook them off; when they
did it again he would have fought them to the death, had it not been for
his friend, tall Medallion the auctioneer, who laid a strong hand on his
arm and said, "Steady, Turgeon, steady!" and he had yielded to the firm
friendly pressure.

Medallion had left no stone unturned to clear him at the trial, had
himself played detective unceasingly. But the hard facts remained, and
on a chain of circumstantial evidence Blaze Turgeon was convicted of
manslaughter and sent to prison for ten years. Blaze himself had said
that he did not remember, but he could not believe that he had committed
the crime. Robbery? He shrugged his shoulders at that, he insisted that
his lawyer should not reply to the foolish and insulting suggestion.
But the evidence went to show that Gamache had all the winnings when the
other members of the party retired, and this very money had been found
in Blaze's pocket. There was only Blaze's word that they had played
cards again. Anger? Possibly. Blaze could not recall, though he knew
they had quarrelled. The judge himself, charging the jury, said that he
never before had seen a prisoner so frank, so outwardly honest, but
he warned them that they must not lose sight of the crime itself, the
taking of a human life, whereby a woman was made a widow and a child
fatherless. The jury found him guilty.

With few remarks the judge delivered his sentence, and then himself,
shaken and pale, left the court-room hurriedly, for Blaze Turgeon's
father had been his friend from boyhood.

Blaze took his sentence calmly, looking the jury squarely in the eyes,
and when the judge stopped, he bowed to him, and then turned to the jury
and said:

"Gentlemen, you have ruined my life. You don't know, and I don't know,
who killed the man. You have guessed, and I take the penalty. Suppose
I'm innocent--how will you feel when the truth comes out? You've known
me more or less these twenty years, and you've said, with evidently no
more knowledge than I've got, that I did this horrible thing. I don't
know but that one of you did it. But you are safe, and I take my ten
years!"

He turned from them, and, as he did so, he saw a woman looking at him
from a corner of the court-room, with a strange, wild e