ve been accused of murder.
I was acquitted. You say that nothing counts but the court action--and
that's all I have to say in my behalf. The jury found me not guilty.
In regard--to this, I'll obey the court order until I can prove to the
judge's satisfaction that this whole thing is a fraud and a fake. In
the meanwhile--" he turned anxiously, almost piteously, "do you care to
go with me, Ba'tiste?"

Heavily, silently, the French-Canadian joined him, and together they
walked down the narrow road to the camp. Neither spoke for a long
time. Ba'tiste walked with his head deep between his shoulders, and
Houston knew that memories were heavy upon him, memories of his
Julienne and the day that he came home to find, instead of a waiting
wife, only a mound beneath the sighing pines and a stalwart cross above
it. As for Houston, his own life had gone gray with the sudden
recurrence of the past. He lived again the first days of it all, when
life had been one constant repetition of questions, then solitude,
questions and solitude, as the homicide squad brought him up from his
cell to inquire about some new angle that they had come upon, to
question him regarding his actions on the night of the death of Tom
Langdon, then to send him back to "think it over" in the hope that the
constant tangle of questions might cause him to change his story and
give them an opening wedge through which they could force him to a
confession. He lived again the black hours in the dingy courtroom,
with its shadows and soot spots brushing against the window, the twelve
blank-faced men in the jury box, and the witnesses, one after another,
who went to the box in an effort to swear his life away. He went again
through the agony of the new freedom--the freedom of a man imprisoned
by stronger things than mere bars and cells of steel--when first he had
gone into the world to strive to fight back to the position he had
occupied before the pall of accusation had descended upon him, and to
fight seemingly in vain. Friends had vanished, a father had gone to
his grave, believing almost to the last that it had been his money and
the astuteness of his lawyers that had obtained freedom for a guilty
son, certainly not a self-evidence of innocence that had caused the
twelve men to report back to the judge that they had been unable to
force their convictions "beyond the shadow of a doubt." A nightmare
had it been and a nightmare it was again, as drawn-featured