bent upon them to come forward in championship of
those in trouble. There are, doubtless, those who think that Nero was a
pleasant young man, whose cruelties were but the resultant of an
overflow of high spirits; and who regard Henry VIII. in the light of a
henpecked husband unfortunate in the possession of six wives. These
people delight in expressing their sympathy with great scoundrels of
the Ned Kelly order. They view them as the embodiment of heroism,
unsympathetically and disgracefully treated by the narrow understanding
of the law. If one half the world does kick a man when he is down, the
other half invariably consoles the prostrate individual with halfpence.

And therefore, even while the weight of public opinion was dead against
Fitzgerald he had his share of avowed sympathy. There was a comfort in
this for Madge. Not that if the whole countryside had unanimously
condemned her lover she would have believed him guilty. The element of
logic does not enter into the championship of woman Her love for a man
is sufficient to exalt him to the rank of a demi-god. She absolutely
refuses to see the clay feet of her idol. When all others forsake she
clings to him, when all others frown she smiles on him, and when he
dies she reveres his memory as that of a saint and a martyr. Young men
of the present day are prone to disparage their womenkind; but a poor
thing is the man, who in time of trouble has no woman to stand by him
with cheering words and loving comfort. And so Madge Frettlby, true
woman that she was, had nailed her colours to the mast. She refused
surrender to anyone, or before any argument. He was innocent, and his
innocence would be proved, for she had an intuitive feeling that he
would be saved at the eleventh hour. How, she knew not; but she was
certain that it would be so. She would have gone to see Brian in
prison, but that her father absolutely forbade her doing so. Therefore
she was dependent upon Calton for all the news respecting him, and any
message which she wished conveyed.

Brian's persistent refusal to set up the defence of an ALIBI, annoyed
Calton, the more so as he could conceive no reason sufficiently worthy
of the risk to which it subjected his client.

"If it's for the sake of a woman," he said to Brian, "I don't care who
she is, it's absurdly Quixotic. Self-preservation is the first law of
nature, and if my neck was in danger I'd spare neither man, woman, nor
child to save it."

"I dare