n with him. And presently
the clerk at his side inscribed in the records: "The State vs. Dieudonne
Lane, murder in the first degree. Indictment quashed on motion of
Assistant State's Attorney."

"You will discharge the prisoner from custody, Mr. Sheriff," said the
judge.

"I'd like to say, if it please the Court," said Cowles, drawing a large
and adequate handkerchief from his pocket and blowing a large and
adequate nose, "that last night, at the time of the--the disturbance
which these gentlemen here helped me to quell--this same young man
that's just been discharged--why, he helped me as much as anybody."

"What do you mean?" demanded the judge severely. "You let him out of
your custody when he was under commitment?"

"Yes, your Honor. I may have been short in some of my duties, your
Honor. I let a woman--a young woman--go in there last night to see him
for a few minutes. When she went out I must have forgot to lock the
door. What they said, now, it must have stirred me up some way. When the
mob formed and came to the jail the prisoner had walked out. But right
at the worst of it, there he was. And after it he went on back to jail
alone. When I got back he was in his cell. The door wasn't locked even
then. My wife wasn't there.

"I reckon, your Honor, we've all of us sort of made a general mistake,"
concluded Dan Cowles deprecatingly. "I allowed I'd tell this Court about
it."

So, amid the frowning silence of the court, and the silence as well of
all who heard this, the two attorneys, the sheriff and Ephraim Adamson
walked on down the winding stairs.

Adamson saw coming across the courthouse yard the figure of an angular
woman, dressed in calico, a sun-bonnet on her head, a sodden
handkerchief in her hand. He walked on hurriedly to meet her. At the
very spot where so lately he and his son had stood to challenge the
world to combat, he took this gaunt old woman in his arms, in the
sunlight before all the world. "Mother!" said he.

And at about this same time--since after all the world and life and
swift keen joy of living must go on just the same--two young persons
stood not far distant from that scene; stood not in the full light of
the sun, stood not in the wisdom and sadness of middle age, but in
youth--in youth and the glory and splendor of the vast, ineffable,
indispensable illusion. The dim twilight which lighted them might have
been the soft, vague light of the world's own dawning--the same which
poor