tood out like a rose-colored balloon. "Fifteen years!
Those men must be mad! Come, Benny, put on your things. You must go with
me to the district attorney's office and have this arranged. Imagine it!
After her confessing too! I said she was wrong to confess."

But when she reached the office she found no one there but Miss
Finnegan, the stenographer.

"Where's Mr. O'Bannon?" she asked as if she had an engagement with him
which he had broken.

Miss Finnegan raised her head from her keys and looked at the unexpected
visitor in a tomato-colored hat, whose feet had sounded so sharp and
quick on the stairs and who had thrown open the door so violently.

"Mr. O'Bannon's in court," she answered in a tone which seemed to
suggest that almost anyone would know that. By this time, mounting the
stairs with more dignity, Miss Bennett entered, appealing and
conciliatory.

"We want so much to see him," she murmured.

Miss Finnegan softened and said that she'd telephone over to the
courthouse. He might be able to get over for a minute. She telephoned
and hung up the receiver in silence.

"When will he be here?" demanded Lydia.

"When he's at liberty," Miss Finnegan answered coldly.

Waiting did not calm Lydia nor the atmosphere of the office, which
proclaimed O'Bannon's power. People kept coming in with the same
question--when could they see the district attorney? An old foreigner
was there who kept muttering something to Miss Finnegan in broken
English.

"Yes, but then your son ought to plead," Miss Finnegan kept saying over
and over again, punctuating her sentence with quick roulades on the
typewriter.

There was a thin young man with shifty eyes, and a local lawyer with a
strong flavor of the soil about him.

Miss Bennett watched Lydia anxiously. The girl was not accustomed to
being kept waiting. Her bank, her dentist, the shops where she dealt had
long ago learned that it saved everybody trouble to serve Miss Thorne
first.

At last O'Bannon entered. Lydia sprang up.

"Mr. O'Bannon----" she began. He held up his hand.

"One minute," he said.

He was listening to the story of the old woman, not even glancing in
Lydia's direction; yet something in the bend of his head, in the strain
of his effort to keep his eyes on his interlocutor and his mind on what
was being told him made Miss Bennett believe he was acutely aware of
their presence. Yet Lydia patiently bore even this delay. Miss Bennett
drew a breath of relie