bbering to you to lay down and take a light
sentence?" Barclay did not answer. Bemis continued: "Brace up,
John--what's turned you baby when we've got the whole thing won? We
didn't kill Hendricks, did we? Are you full of remorse and going to
turn state's evidence?"

Barclay looked at the ground for a time, and said: "I believe, Lige,
we did kill Bob--if it comes to that; and we are morally responsible
for--"

"Oh, bag your head, John; I'm going home. When you can talk some
sense, let me know."

And Bemis left Barclay standing in the garden looking at the sunrise
across the mill-pond. Presently the carrier boy with a morning paper
came around, and in it Barclay read the account of Hendricks' reported
suicide, corroborated by his antemortem statement, written and
delivered to Jacob Dolan an hour before he died.

"When I took charge of the Exchange National Bank," it read, "I found
that my father owed Garrison County nine thousand dollars for another
man's taxes, which he, my father, had agreed to pay, but had no money
to do so. The other man insisted on my father forging a note to
straighten matters up. It seemed at that time that the bank would
close and the whole county would be ruined if my father had not
committed that deed. I could not put the money back into the treasury
without revealing my father's crime, so I let the matter run for a few
years, renewing the forged note, and then, as it seemed an
interminable job of forgery, I forged the balance on the county books,
one afternoon between administrations in 1879. Mr. E. W. Bemis, who is
trying to force polluted water on Sycamore Ridge, has discovered this
forgery and has threatened to expose me in that and perhaps other
matters. So I feel that my usefulness in the fight for pure water in
the town is ended. I leave funds to fight the matter in the courts,
and I feel sure that we will win."

Barclay sat in the warm morning sun, reading and re-reading the
statement. Finally Jane Barclay, thin, broken and faded, on whom the
wrath of the people was falling with crushing weight, came into the
veranda, and put her hands on her husband's shoulders.

"Come in, John, breakfast is ready."

The woman whom the leprosy of dishonest wealth was whitening, walked
dumbly into the great house, and ate in silence. "I am going to
Molly," she said simply, as the two rose from their meal. "I think she
needs me, dear; won't you come, too?" she asked.

"I can't, Jane--I can't,"