lean-to, I had time to see what might be done. If in making an
experiment with a man's soul I usurped the authority of my Lord and
Master, I am sorry. But he knows that I did it for the best.

"I deliberately built up for Judson Clark a new identity. He was my
nephew, my brother Henry's son. He had the traditions of an honorable
family to carry on, and those traditions were honor, integrity,
clean living and work. I did not stress love, for that I felt must be
experienced, not talked about. But love was to be the foundation on
which I built. The boy had had no love in his life.

"It has worked out. I may not live to see it at its fullest, but I defy
the world to produce today a finer or more honorable gentleman, a more
useful member of the community. And it will last. The time may come when
Judson Clark will again be Judson Clark. I have expected it for many
years. But he will never again be the Judson Clark of ten years ago.
He may even will to return to the old reckless ways, but as I lie here,
perhaps never to see him, I say this: he cannot go back. His character
and habits of thought are established.

"To convict Judson Clark of the murder of Howard Lucas is to convict
a probably or at least possibly innocent man. To convict Richard
Livingstone of that crime is to convict a different man, innocent of the
crime, innocent of its memory, innocent of any single impulse to lift
his hand against a law of God or the state."

XXXII

For a month Haverly had buzzed with whispered conjectures. It knew
nothing, and yet somehow it knew everything. Doctor David was ill at
the seashore, and Dick was not with him. Harrison Miller, who was never
known to depart farther from his comfortable hearth than the railway
station in one direction and the Sayre house in the other, had made a
trip East and was now in the far West. Doctor Reynolds, who might or
might not know something, had joined the country club and sent for his
golf bag.

And Elizabeth Wheeler was going around with a drawn white face and a
determined smile that faded the moment one looked away.

The village was hurt and suspicious. It resented its lack of knowledge,
and turned cynical where, had it been taken into confidence, it would
have been solicitous. It believed that Elizabeth had been jilted, for
it knew, via Annie and the Oglethorpe's laundress, that no letters came
from Dick. And against Dick its indignation was directed, in a hot flame
of mainly femin