as this matter goes on you will not be so
confident." Saying that he would come to Jacksonville with his proofs
Fortescue left us and disappeared.

Then Douglas turned to the talk of politics with his friends. Mr.
Williams went to his office. I was left alone. Had we accomplished
anything? I went back to see the state's attorney by myself, and asked
him if he did not suspect Fortescue. The state's attorney said that the
case was perfectly clear against the half-breed; that my only interest
in the matter was the marriage and to go back and defend that if I
chose, though he felt sure that Fortescue would amply prove that he had
married Zoe. I dropped the whole thing and called upon Abigail.

She began at once to urge me to come to Chicago. This was to be a city.
The opportunities here were infinitely rich. The life was increasingly
more interesting. She knew of my troubles, knew of the murder, for it
had been the talk of the town. She urged upon me a new life. I did not
need to sell my farm--leave it. Come to Chicago where fortunes were
being made and where greater fortunes would come to men of vision and
energy. We took a walk by the lake, which in reality only came to the
shore far south of the town--south of the mouth of the river. Here the
waves rolled upon the sand. What purity and blueness in the sky! To our
right as far as we could see wastes of yellow sand, dunes, brush, small
oaks and pines! Back of us a ragged and wild landscape being broken or
leveled by builders, by the opening of streets and roads.

Abigail was truly my friend, wise and sympathetic. Her clear-cut
thinking sheared away accidental things, fringes of irrelevancy. I was
so glad to get her opinion on the various things that perplexed me. She
advised me to make the best fight I could against Fortescue. After that
come to Chicago whatever the result. We parted with a clasp of the hand.
Then I went to find Douglas.

CHAPTER XXVI

At times afterward I reproached myself for not doing more to fix the
guilt of Zoe's death upon Fortescue. Particularly as it became clear to
me that his freedom from that responsibility energized his descent upon
me for Zoe's interest in the farm. What had my generosity, foolish and
boyish, come to after all?

But on this trip to Chicago, whatever our resolutions were on the way,
they melted or scattered when we found the half-breed had confessed;
also when we talked to the witnesses. Douglas, too, though he h