pared to you by the mercies of the God whose commandments you set at
naught, you have been wallowing in sin--in crime!"

Tom locked his clasped fingers fast around his knees and would not open
the flood-gates of passion.

"If I can sit here and take that from you, it's because it isn't so," he
replied soberly.

Silas Crafts rose, stern and pitiless.

"Wretched boy! Out of your own mouth you shall be convicted. Where were
you on Wednesday morning?"

Tom had to think back before he could place the Wednesday morning, and
his momentary hesitation was immediately set down to the score of
conscious guilt.

"I was at home most of the time; between ten o'clock and noon I was on
the mountain."

"Alone?"

"No; not all of the time."

"You say well. There were three of you: a hardened, degraded boy, a
woman no less wicked and abandoned, and the devil who tempted you."

The flood-gates of passion would hold no longer.

"It's a lie!" he denied hotly. "I just happened to meet Nan Bryerson at
the spring under the big rock, and--"

"Well, go on," said the inexorable voice.

Tom choked in a sudden fit of rage and helplessness. He saw how
incredible the simple truth would sound; how like a clumsy equivocation
it must appear to one who already believed the worst of him. So he took
refuge in the last resort alike of badgered innocence and hardened
guilt.

"I don't have to defend myself!" he burst out. "If you can believe I'm
that low-down, you're welcome to!" Then, abruptly: "I reckon we'd better
be going on home; they'll be waiting dinner for us at the house."

He got on his feet with that, but the accuser was still confronting
him, with the dark eyes glowing and a monitory finger pointed to detain
him.

"Not yet, Thomas Gordon; there is a duty laid on me. I had hoped and
prayed that I might find you repentant; you are not repentant."

"No," said Tom, and he confirmed it with an oath in sheer bravado.

"Peace, miserable boy! God is not mocked. Your father has a letter from
Doctor Tollivar; the doors of Beersheba are open to you again. I had
hoped--" The pause was not for effect. It was merely that the man and
the kinsman in Silas Crafts had throttled the righteous judge. "It
breaks my heart, Thomas, but I must say it. You have put it out of your
power to say with the Psalmist, 'I will wash mine hands in innocency: so
will I compass thine altar, O Lord.' You must give up all thoughts of
going back to Beersheba."

"