ed at last. "If you will get one of the boys
to saddle Lightning for me I will be with you in ten minutes."

He kept his promise, and in a short time was listening to the strangest
tale he had ever heard. As he listened his face became more and more
serious.

"But, girls, this thing sounds impossible!" he burst forth, finally.
"Are you telling me that you, alone and unprotected, managed to inveigle
this murderer into confessing his crime to you? Gee, it's--it's
unbelievable! The four of you would be a great help to me in my
profession," he added, with a chuckle.

"I didn't think you would take it as a joke," said Betty, reproachfully.

"It isn't a joke," returned Allen, his face grave again. "It's a mighty
serious business, if you will excuse my saying so. It makes me sick when
I think of the chance you took." He was speaking to all the girls, but
his look of concern was for Betty.

"Oh, we don't want to think about ourselves," said the latter,
impatiently. "We've done a good deal more dangerous things than that in
our lives. We thought--we hoped--you might help us to prove his
innocence----"

"But the man's guilty," said Allen, surprised. "We have that by his own
confession----"

With a glance of despair at the others, Betty interrupted him.

"Listen to me, Allen," she said. "This is what I think----" And she went
on to tell him her idea while he listened, at first with a smile of
faint amusement on his lips which gradually changed to grave admiration
as he realized Betty's unfailing faith in the basic goodness of human
nature.

"I hope you are right, little girl," he said at last, when she had
finished and was looking at him earnestly. "I'd like to believe you were
right----"

"But you can't?" she finished for him, trying to stifle the
disappointment in her heart.

"No, I can't," he answered truthfully. "When a man is so sure of his
crime that he flees his own country, gives up money and fame to escape
the law, you may be pretty sure that his crime was a real one."

"But, Allen, you don't know the man," Betty pleaded, pretty close to
tears in the bitterness of her disappointment. "No one could make the
kind of music he does and be truly wicked. I wish you could have met
him. I think you would have tried a little harder to help him."

"I'm willing to help him, if I can," Allen answered gently, feeling that
he would be almost willing to step into this poor musician's place if
he might have Betty plead f