her
detached belongings away from her with an unconscious movement of
disencumbering herself for some desperate leap.

"I'll tell everything--if you'll let me--now," said she, rising to her
feet.

She was white and cold, but steady, and sternly resolute. The prosecutor
had not expected that; his challenge had been only a spectacular play
for effect. Her offer to speak left him mentally groping behind himself
for a support. It would have been different if he had been certain of
what she desired to say. As she stood before him there, bloodless, and
in such calm of outward aspect that it was almost hysterical, he did not
know whether she was friend or foe.

Joe had not expected it; the hundreds of spectators had not looked for
that, and Hammer was as much surprised as a ponderous, barber-minded man
could be. Yet he was the first, of all of them there, to get his wits in
hand. The prosecutor had challenged her, and, he argued, what she had to
say must be in justification of both herself and Joe. He stood up
quickly, and demanded that Ollie Chase be put under oath and brought to
the witness-stand.

Ollie's mother had hold of her hand, looking up into her face in great
consternation, begging her to sit down and keep still. In general,
people were standing, and Uncle Posen Spratt was worming the big end of
his steer-horn trumpet between shoulders of men and headgear of women to
hear what he could not see.

Judge Maxwell commanded order. The prosecuting attorney began to protest
against the fulfilment of the very thing that, with so much feeling and
earnestness, he had demanded but a minute before.

"Considering this late hour in the proceedings, your honor----" he
began.

Judge Maxwell silenced him with a stern and reproving look.

"It is never too late for justice, Mr. Prosecutor," said he. "Let that
woman come forward and be sworn."

Hammer went eagerly to the assistance of Ollie, opening the little gate
in the railing for her officiously, putting his palm under her elbow in
his sustaining fashion. The clerk administered the oath; Ollie dropped
her hand wearily at her side.

"I lied the other day," said she, as one surrendering at the end of a
hopeless defense, "and I'm tired of hiding the truth any more."

Joe Newbolt was moved by a strange feeling of mingled thankfulness and
regret. Tears had started to his eyes, and were coursing down his face,
unheeded and unchecked. The torture of the past days and weeks,