ic
feelings, forgot the claims of my dear, dead mother, and even those of my
own future. Such passion and such devotion merited consideration from
the man who had called them forth. I would not slight the claims of my
dead mother but I would give this young girl a chance for her life. Let
others ferret out the fact that she had visited the club-house with her
sister; I would not proclaim it. It was enough for me to proclaim my
innocence, and that I would do to the last.

I was in this frame of mind when Charles Clifton called and was allowed
to see me. I had sent for him in one of my discouraged moods. He was my
friend, but he was also my legal adviser, and it was as such I had
summoned him, and it was as such he had now come. Cordial as our
relations had been--though he was hardly one of my ilk--I noted no
instinctive outstretching of his hand, and so did not reach out mine.
Appearances had been too strong against me for any such spontaneous
outburst from even my best friends. I realised that to expect otherwise
from him or from any other man would be to play the fool; and this was no
time for folly. The day for that was passed.

I was the first to speak.

"You see me where you have never thought to see a friend of yours. But we
won't go into that. The police have good reasons for what they have done
and I presume feel justified in my commitment. Notwithstanding, I am an
innocent man so far as the attack made upon Miss Cumberland goes. I had
no hand in her murder, if murder it is found out to be. My story which
you have read in the papers and which I felt forced to give out, possibly
to my own shame and that of another whom I would fain have saved, is an
absolutely true one. I did not arrive at The Whispering Pines until
after Miss Cumberland was dead. To this I am ready to swear and it is
upon this fact you must rely, in any defence you may hereafter be called
upon to make in my regard."

He listened as a lawyer would be apt to listen to such statements from
the man who had summoned him to his aid. But I saw that I had made no
impression on his convictions. He regarded me as a guilty man, and what
was more to the point no doubt, as one for whom no plea could be made or
any rational defence undertaken.

"You don't believe me," I went on, still without any great bitterness. "I
am not surprised at it, after what the man Clarke has said of seeing me
with my hands on her throat. Any man, friend or not, would take me f