she was
in utter ignorance.

"I can do nothing, my child," he said, "nothing! It is a case for the
jury. They have to hear the evidence, and then they pass judgment
accordingly. If they condemn him as guilty, I must pass judgment of
death, I cannot help myself. I am as helpless as the hangman. If the
jury says 'Guilty,' I must pronounce death, and the hangman must do the
horrible thing!"

"But, father, don't you see? He has refused to have counsel, and you
would have to sum up the evidence. And when you are summing up you
could say how inconclusive it was, how terrible it would be to hang a
man because a set of circumstances seemed to point in a certain
direction."

He was silent for a few seconds. The old numbness had come over his
mind again. But he determined to let his daughter know nothing of it.

"You see, Mary," he said, "a judge can do so little, even in the way of
summing up, and he must do justice. A judge sits on the bench as a
representative of justice, and all he can do is to analyse the
evidence. And you know what the evidence is!"

"But he could not do it," said the girl.

"Think," went on the judge, and he spoke more like a machine than a
man. "Think of the terrible train of events: the long years of
personal enmity between them; the injuries which the prisoner suffered
at the hands of the murdered man; the blow struck on the night of the
murder; and then--don't you see, Mary? Besides, there is something
else, something which has never come to light, something which must
never come to light. Wilson had been, as you know, spoken of as your
fiance, and you know the letter I received from Stepaside. He asked
that you might be his wife, and he would be jealous of Wilson. Don't
you see? Don't you see? Mind you, this must not come to light. It
must not be spoken of at all. Nobody guesses that Stepaside cared
anything about you. But what am I saying? Drive it out of your mind,
Mary--it's of no consequence at all, and you must not consider it for a
moment. Oh, my God, the horror of it! Don't you see, Mary? The
horror of it!"

Evidently she did not understand altogether what he was thinking. She
did not realise that Paul was her half-brother, and therefore could not
altogether understand her father's cry of anguish.

For a moment the two stood together, silent, each looking into the
other's face and trying to read each other's thoughts.

"Father," she said at length, "I want