e a suspicion that
there is one man among them, who will stand out until the stars fall,
and I will tell you why. I happened to be looking at him, when your
Christmas card was shown by Mr. Dunbar. The moment he saw it, he
started, stretched out his hand, and as he looked at it, I saw him
choke up, and pass his hand over his eyes. Soon after Christmas, that
man lost his only child, a girl five years old, who had scarlet fever.
To divert her mind, they gave her a Christmas card to play with, that
some friend had sent to her mother. She had it in her hand when she
died, in convulsions, and it was put in her coffin and buried with her.
My wife helped to nurse and shroud her, and she told me it was the card
shown in court; it was your card. The law can't cut out the
heartstrings of the jury, and I don't believe that man would lift his
hand against your life, any sooner than he would strike the face of his
dead child."

He locked the door, and Beryl found herself at last alone, in the
dreary little den where a single gas burner served only to show the
surrounding cheerlessness. The furniture comprised a wooden bench along
the wall, two chairs, and a table in the middle of the floor; and on
the dusty panes of the grated window, a ray of ruddy light from a lamp
post in the street beneath, broke through the leaden lances of the
rain, and struggled for admission.

The neurotic pharmacopoeia contains nothing so potent as despair to
steady quivering nerves, and steel to superhuman endurance. For Beryl,
the pendulum of suspense had ceased to swing, because the spring of
hope had snapped; and the complete surrender, the mute acceptance of
the worst possible to come, had left her numb, impervious to dread. As
one by one the discovered facts spelled unmistakably the name of her
brother, allowing no margin to doubt his guilt, the necessity of
atonement absorbed every other consideration; and the desire to avert
his punishment extinguished the last remnant of selfish anxiety. If by
suffering in his stead, she could secure to him life--the opportunities
of repentance, of expiation, of making his peace with God, of saving
his immortal soul--how insignificant seemed all else. The innate love
of life, the natural yearning for happiness, the once fervent
aspirations for fame--the indescribable longing for the fruition of
youth's high hopes, which like a Siren sang somewhere in the golden
mists of futurity--all these were now crushed beyond