xican."

After Judge Harlin went away Mead sat on the edge of his bed, his
elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and his broad shoulders
rounded into an attitude of deep dejection.

"What is the use?" his thoughts ran. "They are bound to get me sooner
or later, and it might just as well be now as any time. It won't make
any difference whether they clear me or convict me. She will believe
me guilty anyway, because her father and all her friends will say so."
He rose and began pacing the room and his thoughts turned persistently
to Marguerite Delarue. Since he had heard the rumor of her approaching
marriage to Wellesly he had tried not to let his thoughts rest upon
her, but sometimes the rush of his scanty memories would not be
forbidden.

Again he recalled the day when he first saw her, as she stood with her
sick baby brother in her arms. She was so young, so blooming, so fair,
that her anxious face and troubled eyes seemed all the more
appealing. He remembered that he had looked at her a moment before he
could speak, and in that moment love smote his heart. He had wished to
see her father and she had laid the sick child on a couch while she
left the room. The little one had fretted and he had sat down beside
it and shown it his watch and his revolver, and it had put out its
hands to him, and when Marguerite came back she had found the big,
tall, broad-shouldered man cradling the sick child in his arms. He
halted in his moody pacing of the cell and a sudden, shivering thrill
shot through his whole big body as he saw again the look of pleasure
and of trustful admiration which had lighted her face and shone in her
dark blue eyes. The child had clung to him and, pleased, he had asked
if he might not take it in his arms for a short ride on his horse. And
after that, whenever he had passed the Delarue house alone, he had
tried to see the little boy, and had tried still more, in roundabout
ways, to bring the child's sister outside the house, where he might
see her and hear her voice. Four times he had done that, and once he
had seen her in her father's store and had held a few minutes'
conversation with her. He remembered every word she had said. He
repeated them all to himself, and went over again every least incident
of the times he had stopped his horse at her gate and had taken the
laughing child from her arms and they had looked at each other and he
had tried to say something--anything, and then had ridden away.