There's no place in the world for me unless some one else
pays the price. It's better for every one concerned that I should--stay
buried."

CHAPTER XXXIII

OVER THE MOUNTAINS

"He didn't do it!"

Suddenly, Sara found herself saying the words aloud in the darkness and
solitude of the night.

Since her meeting with Garth, on her way to the hospital, every hour had
been an hour of conflict. That brief, strained interview had shaken her
to the depths of her being, and, unable to sleep when night came,
she had lain, staring wide-eyed into the dark, struggling against its
influence.

Little enough had been said. It had been the silences, the dumb,
passion-filled silences, vibrant with all that must not be spoken,
which had tried her endurance to the utmost, and she had fled, at last,
incontinently, because she had felt her resolution weakening each moment
she and Garth remained together--because, with him beside her, the love
against which she had been fighting for twelve long months had wakened
into fierce life again, beating down her puny efforts to withstand it.

The mere sound of his voice, the lightest touch of his hand, had power
to thrill her from head to foot, to rock those barriers which his own
act had forced her to build up between them.

The recollection of that one perfect moment, when the serene austerity
of his face had given the lie to that of which he was accused, lingered
with her, a faint elusive thread of hope which would not leave her,
urging, suggesting, combating the hard facts to which he himself had
given ruthless confirmation.

Almost without her cognizance, Sara's characteristic, vehement belief
in whomsoever she loved--stunned at the first moment of Elisabeth's
revelation--had been gradually creeping back to feeble, halting life,
weakened at times by the mass of evidence arrayed against it, yet still
alive--growing and strengthening secretly within her as an unborn babe
grows and strengthens.

And since that moment on the moor, when her eyes had searched Garth's
face--his face with the mask off--the dormant belief within her had
sprung into conscious knowledge.

Throughout the long hours of the night she had fought against it,
deeming it but the passionate outcome of her love for the man himself.
She _wanted_ to believe him innocent; it was only her love for him which
had raised this phantom doubt of the charges brought against him; the
wish had been father to the thought. So she