ho was at the heart of
it all, was the judge! What should he do? If he did what was in his
heart, he could make him a byword and a hissing through the whole
country; but that, again, meant disgrace for Mary, and he had sworn
that she must suffer nothing. The warder brought him his morning meal,
which he ate silently. He was thinking what the day would bring forth.
He wondered how long the trial would last, and what the jury would say.
He could not see his way through the tangle of his life. But as he
thought of everything a grim resolve mastered him. He would not die;
he simply would not! He would fight to the very last. He would tear
the evidence which had been adduced in fragments. He would proclaim
his innocence, and not only proclaim it, but prove it. He was sadly
handicapped, for whatever else he must do he must see to it that no
suspicion would attach to his mother. But without allowing anyone to
think of her in such a relation, he would make it impossible for the
jury to condemn him.

When breakfast was over, he tramped his little cell, thinking,
thinking, considering a score of plans, and discarding them, yet all
the time fighting his way towards his course of action.

He laughed as he reflected on the irony of the situation. The judge
would not know what he knew, but sitting there in all his stately
dignity, arrayed in his robes of office, he would not realise that the
man charged with murder was his son. He wondered how he could let him
know it, wondered how he could bring his own villainy home to him. He
had not one tender thought for his father, not one--only scorn,
contempt, hatred was in his heart when he thought of him. And yet he
was his own father--father, too, of the woman he loved, the woman whom
he had held in his arms and who had expressed her infinite faith in him.

Not long before the hour of the trial the chaplain again paid him a
visit. But Paul was in no humour to receive him.

"I am afraid you only waste your time coming to me," he said. "I
appreciate the fact that you are a kind-hearted man, but see, I haven't
an atom of faith, not an atom. I do not believe in the value of your
religion. I am an atheist."

"You believe nothing?" said the chaplain.

"Nothing as far as your profession is concerned," said Paul, "nothing."

"Would nothing convince you?" said the chaplain.

"Nothing," replied Paul grimly. And then he laughed. "I am wrong,
though," he added. "Yes, I t