t spoke his thoughts aloud.

"I don't think you did it," he said.

"Everybody believes I did," said Boyd, with pathetic resignation, "and I
am to be hanged for it. So what does it matter now?"

"I am going to look for the guilty man," said Hobart, decidedly.

Boyd shook his head and lay back on his pallet. The others, with a few
words of hope, withdrew, and, when they were outside, Harley said:

"Hobart, were you not wrong to sow the seed of hope in that man's mind
when there is no hope?"

"There is hope," replied Hobart; "I have a plan. Don't ask me anything
about it--it's vague yet--but I may work it."

Harley glanced at him, and, seeing that he was intense and eager, with
his mind concentrated upon this single problem, resolved to leave him to
his own course; so he spent part of the day, a wonderful autumn Sunday,
in a rocking-chair on the piazza of the hotel, and another part walking
with Sylvia. He told her of the murder case and Hobart's action, and her
prompt sympathy was aroused.

"Suppose he should really be innocent?" she said. "It would be an awful
thing to hang an innocent man."

"So it would. He certainly does not look like a bad fellow, but you
know that those who are not bad are sometimes guilty. In any event I
fail to see what Hobart can do."

After the walk, which was all too brief, he returned to his
rocking-chair on the piazza, but Grayville, being a small place, he knew
everything that was going on within it, by means of a sort of mental
telepathy that the born correspondent acquires. He knew, for instance,
that Hobart was all the time with one or the other of the three
witnesses--Metzger, Thorpe, or Williams--for the moment the most
important persons in Grayville by reason of their conspicuous connection
with the great case.

When Hobart returned, the edge of the sun was behind the highest
mountains; but he took no notice of Harley, walking past him without a
word and burying himself somewhere in the interior of the hotel. Harley
learned subsequently that he went directly to Jimmy Grayson's room, and
remained there at least half an hour, in close conference with the
candidate himself.

The next day was a break in the great campaign. Owing to train
connections, which are not trifles in the Far West, it was necessary, in
order to complete the schedule, to spend an idle day at some place, and
Grayville had been selected as the most comfortable and therefore the
most suitable. And so the