"Oh, very well!" she answered, throwing up her head with a little
touch of forced gayety.

"Why, there are tears in your eyes, girl. No? Oh, but there are!" They
are tears of joy, he thought. She loves Ralph as a brother. "_I_ laugh
when I'm happy, Rotha; it seems that _you_ cry."

"Do I?" she answered, and wondered if the merciful Father above would
ever, ever, ever let this bitter hour pass by.

"No, it's worry, Rotha, that's it; you're not well, that's the truth."

Willy would have been satisfied to let the explanation resolve itself
into this, but Rotha broke silence, saying, "What if it were _not_
good news--"

The words were choking her, and she stopped.

"Not good news--what news?" asked Willy, half muttering the girl's
words in a bewildered way.

"The news that the constables have gone."

"Gone! What is it? What do you mean, Rotha?"

"What if the constables have gone," said the girl, struggling with her
emotion, "only because--what if they have gone--because--because Ralph
is taken."

"Taken! Where? What are you thinking of?"

"And what if Ralph is to be charged, not with treason--no, but
with--with murder? Oh, Willy!" the girl cried in her distress,
throwing away all disguise, "it is true, true; it is true."

Willy sat down stupefied. With a wild and rigid look, he stared at
Rotha as they sat face to face, eye to eye. He said nothing. A sense
of horror mastered him.

"And this is not all," continued Rotha, the tears rolling down her
cheeks. "What would you say of the person who did it--of the person
who put Ralph in the way of this--this death?" cried the girl, now
burying her face in her hands.

Willy's lips were livid. They moved as if in speech, but the words
would not come.

"What would I say?" he said at length, bitterly and scornfully, as he
rose from his seat with rigid limbs. "I would say--" He stopped; his
teeth were clinched. He drew one hand impatiently across his face. The
idea that Simeon Stagg must have been the informer had at that moment
got possession of his mind. "Never ask me what I would _say_," he
cried.

"Willy, dear Willy," sobbed Rotha, throwing her arms about him, "that
person--"

The sobs were stifling her, but she would not spare herself.

"That person was MYSELF!"

"You!" cried Willy, breaking from her embrace. "And the murder?" he
asked hoarsely, "whose murder?"

"James Wilson's."

"Let me go--let me go, I say."

"Another word." Rotha stepped into the