he hid her face on his breast.
It was as though she were pressing it against a stone. They released
each other and presently the cab was rolling along at a jog-trot to the
docks with those two people as far apart as they could get from each
other, in opposite corners.

After a silence given up to mutual examination he uttered his first
coherent sentence outside the walls of the prison.

"What has done for me was envy. Envy. There was a lot of them just
bursting with it every time they looked my way. I was doing too well.
So they went to the Public Prosecutor--"

She said hastily "Yes! Yes! I know," and he glared as if resentful
that the child had turned into a young woman without waiting for him to
come out. "What do you know about it?" he asked. "You were too young."
His speech was soft. The old voice, the old voice! It gave her a
thrill. She recognised its pointless gentleness always the same no
matter what he had to say. And she remembered that he never had much to
say when he came down to see her. It was she who chattered, chattered,
on their walks, while stiff and with a rigidly-carried head, he dropped
a gentle word now and then.

Moved by these recollections waking up within her, she explained to him
that within the last year she had read and studied the report of the
trial.

"I went through the files of several papers, papa."

He looked at her suspiciously. The reports were probably very
incomplete. No doubt the reporters had garbled his evidence. They were
determined to give him no chance either in court or before the public
opinion. It was a conspiracy... "My counsel was a fool too," he added.
"Did you notice? A perfect fool."

She laid her hand on his arm soothingly. "Is it worth while talking
about that awful time? It is so far away now." She shuddered slightly
at the thought of all the horrible years which had passed over her young
head; never guessing that for him the time was but yesterday. He folded
his arms on his breast, leaned back in his corner and bowed his head.
But in a little while he made her jump by asking suddenly:

"Who has got hold of the Lone Valley Railway? That's what they were
after mainly. Somebody has got it. Parfitts and Co. grabbed it--eh?
Or was it that fellow Warner..."

"I--I don't know," she said quite scared by the twitching of his lips.

"Don't know!" he exclaimed softly. Hadn't her cousin told her? Oh yes.
She had left them--of course.