side of the bed. Her hand came forward and
clasped his; she bent over him, holding him and fondling him.

"It is all right, Hugh," she whispered--"Oh, Hugh! it is all right now."

"All right?" he questioned dazedly.

"Yes; Mr. Santoine knows; he--he was not what we thought him. He
believed all the while that you were justly sentenced. Now he knows
otherwise--"

"He--Santoine--believed that?" Eaton asked incredulously.

"Yes; he says his blindness was used by them to make him think so. So
now he is very angry; he says no one who had anything to do with it
shall escape. He figured it all out--most wonderfully--that it must
have been Latron in the study. He has been working all night--they
have already made several arrests and every port on the lake is being
watched for the boat they got away on."

"Is that true, Edith? Lawrence, is it true?"

"Yes; quite true, Hugh!" Hillward choked and turned away.

Eaton sank back against his pillows; his eyes--dry, bright and filled
still with questioning for a time, as, he tried to appreciate what he
just had heard and all that it meant to him--dampened suddenly as he
realized that it was over now, that long struggle to clear his name
from the charge of murder--the fight which had seemed so hopeless. He
could not realize it to the full as yet; concealment, fear, the sense
of monstrous injustice done him had marked so deeply all his thoughts
and feelings that he could not sense the fact that they were gone for
good. So what came to him most strongly now was only realization that
he had been set right with Santoine--Santoine, whom he himself had
misjudged and mistrusted. And Harriet? He had not needed to be set
right with her; she had believed and trusted him from the first, in
spite of all that had seemed against him. Gratitude warmed him as he
thought of her--and that other feeling, deeper, stronger far than
gratitude, or than anything else he ever had felt toward any one but
her, surged up in him and set his pulses wildly beating, as his thought
strained toward the future.

"Where is--Miss Santoine?" he asked.

His sister answered. "She has been helping her father. They left word
they were to be sent for as soon as you woke up, and I've just sent for
them."

Eaton lay silent till he heard them coming. The blind man was
unfamiliar with this room; his daughter led him in. Her eyes were very
bright, her cheeks which had been pale flushed as she met Eaton's