ssuring. "They all say that. They are innocent, of course! Yep--they
all say it. It don't do 'em any good, but just the same they all swear
they're innocent. They keep it up to the very last, no matter how right
they've been got."

The voice of the girl rang clear. There was a note of insistence
that carried a curious dignity of its own. The very simplicity of her
statement might have had a power to convince one who listened without
prejudice, although the words themselves were of the trite sort that any
protesting criminal might utter.

"I tell you, I didn't do it!"

Gilder himself felt the surge of emotion that swung through these
moments, but he would not yield to it. With his lack of imagination,
he could not interpret what this time must mean to the girl before him.
Rather, he merely deemed it his duty to carry through this unfortunate
affair with a scrupulous attention to detail, in the fashion that had
always been characteristic of him during the years in which he had
steadily mounted from the bottom to the top.

"What's the use of all this pretense?" he demanded, sharply. "You were
given a fair trial, and there's an end of it."

The girl, standing there so feebly, seeming indeed to cling for support
to the man who always held her thus closely by the wrist, spoke again
with an astonishing clearness, even with a sort of vivacity, as if she
explained easily something otherwise in doubt.

"Oh, no, I wasn't!" she contradicted bluntly, with a singular confidence
of assertion. "Why, if the trial had been fair, I shouldn't be here."

The harsh voice of Cassidy again broke in on the passion of the girl
with a professional sneer.

"That's another thing they all say."

But the girl went on speaking fiercely, impervious to the man's coarse
sarcasm, her eyes, which had deepened almost to purple, still fixed
piercingly on Gilder, who, for some reason wholly inexplicable to him,
felt himself strangely disturbed under that regard.

"Do you call it fair when the lawyer I had was only a boy--one whom the
court told me to take, a boy trying his first case--my case, that
meant the ruin of my life? My lawyer! Why, he was just getting
experience--getting it at my expense!" The girl paused as if exhausted
by the vehemence of her emotion, and at last the sparkling eyes drooped
and the heavy lids closed over them. She swayed a little, so that the
officer tightened his clasp on her wrist.

There followed a few seconds of sil