Alvin Mead, and moved aside, and Madelon and Dorothy
entered.

They followed Alvin Mead down the icy, dark corridor to Burr's cell
door. He unlocked it, and bade Dorothy enter. He cast a forbidding
look at Madelon. "I will stand here," she said with a strange
meekness, almost as if her heart were broken; but when the jailer
prepared to follow Dorothy into Burr's cell she caught him by the arm
and tried to force him back, and cried out sharply that he should let
her see him alone. "She is the girl he is going to marry, I tell
you!" she said. "Let them see each other alone. You cannot come
between two like that when they are in such trouble."

Alvin Mead looked at her a second irresolutely. Then he stepped back
in the corridor and locked the cell door. "That the gal? Thought ye
was the one," he said, with a half-chuckle, with coarse, sharp eyes
upon her face.

"He is going to marry her," Madelon repeated. She stood stiff and
straight like a statue, and waited. Once, when Alvin made an
impatient motion as though to open the door, she restrained him with
such despairing eagerness that he drew back and looked at her
wonderingly, and stood in surly silence awhile longer.

"She's got to come out now," he said, at last. "I've got other things
to tend to. Can't stay here no longer, nohow." He unlocked the door
and threw it open with a jerk. "Time's up!" he shouted, and Dorothy
came out directly, almost as if she were running away. Alvin Mead
clapped to the door with a great jar and locked it. Madelon, had she
tried, could not have got a glimpse of Burr; but she did not try. She
sprang at Dorothy Fair, and took her by the shoulders, and looked
into her scared face with agonized questioning.

"Did--he confess?" she gasped out. "Did--he tell you, did he--tell
you, Dorothy Fair?"

Dorothy shook her head in a mute terror that was almost horror. It
seemed as if she would sink to the floor under Madelon's heavy hands.
Alvin Mead stood staring at them.

"Didn't he--tell you--I was the one who--stabbed Lot? Didn't he--tell
you?"

"She's at it again," muttered Alvin Mead.

Dorothy shook her head. "He wouldn't speak," she said, faintly. "He
would say nothing about it."

Madelon fairly shook her. "Couldn't you make him speak? _You!_"

"I couldn't, I couldn't, Madelon!"

"Did you tell him your heart would break if he didn't--that you
couldn't marry him if he didn't?"

"Yes--don't, don't--look at me so, Madelon."

Alvin