is reach and his concern. But Sam Lucas did that unusual thing.
He stood pointing at her, his jaw trembling as if the intensity of his
passion had palsied his tongue.

"Gentlemen of the jury, what part this woman played in that dark night's
work the world may never know," said he. "But the world is not blind,
and its judgments are usually justified by time. This woman, Ollie
Chase, and this defendant have conspired to hold silence between them,
in what hope, to what unholy end, God alone knows. But who will believe
the weak and improbable story this woman has told on the witness-stand?
Who is so blind that he cannot see the stain of her infidelity and the
ghastly blight of that midnight shadow upon her quaking soul?"

He turned from her abruptly. Hammer partly rose, as if to enter an
objection. He seemed to reconsider it, and sat down. Ollie shrank
against her mother's shoulders, trembling. The older woman, fierce as a
dragon in the sudden focus of the crowd's attention and eyes, fixed in
one shifting sweep from the prosecuting attorney to her daughter, put
her arm about Ollie and comforted her with whispered words.

The prosecutor proceeded, solemnly:

"I tell you, gentlemen, that these two people, Ollie Chase and Joseph
Newbolt, alone in that house that night, alone in that house for two
days before this tragedy darkened it, before the blood of gray old Isom
Chase ran down upon its threshold, these two conspired in their guilt to
hide the truth.

"If this woman would open her lips, if this woman would break the seal
of this guilty compact and speak, the mystery of this case would
dissolve, and the heroic romance which this defendant is trying to put
over the squalid facts of his guilt would turn out only a sordid story
of midnight lust and robbery. If conscience would trouble this woman to
speak, gentlemen of the jury--but she has no conscience, and she has no
heart!"

He turned again to Ollie, savagely; her mother covered her with her arm,
as if to protect her from a blow.

"There she cowers in her guilty silence, in what hope God alone knows,
but if she would speak----"

"_I will speak!_" Ollie cried.

CHAPTER XXI

OLLIE SPEAKS

Ollie's voice, low and steady in earnest determination, broke the
current of his denunciation as a knife severs a straining cord. The
suddenness of her declaration almost made the prosecutor reel. She was
sitting up, straight and outwardly calm, pushing her cloak and ot