ll!" he said; and then, "there's one
thing sure; you will not go alone!"

"Why, you don't mean to say I'm to go!" I cried.

He looked inquiringly. "Why not?"

"Oh, but father doesn't even like me to speak her name."

Mr. Dingley coughed. "Quite right, quite right! That is, of course,
under ordinary circumstances. But in affairs of this sort, where
state's evidence is concerned, we are obliged to lay personal feeling
aside. Now from this letter," and Mr. Dingley tapped the little sheet
which he held before him, "I gather that the Senora Valencia may have
some information concerning this case of ours now going forward. Of
course if it's incriminating, the state must have it. On the other
hand, if it should tend to exonerate the defendant, of course we shall
be very glad."

I murmured, "Oh, yes!" The hope of a possible means of clearing Johnny
Montgomery went flushing through me.

If the Spanish Woman had anything to say I knew it would be in his
favor. Still, there was something strange about it. "But if she has
this information," I asked, "why doesn't she tell it in the court?"

"My dear Miss Ellie, why indeed? We never know why women do things.
But it has been my experience in legal cases, and especially in
criminal ones, that women will often give evidence in some such
high-fantastic way as this, which could never be got out of them
through the proper channel,--that is by means of cross-examination, in
court. Now she's evidently taken a fancy to tell you something, and I
feel it is our duty to see just how much is in it."

"Oh, yes," I said again, but this time more faintly, for when I thought
of whom I was to face, some cowardly thing in me wavered, "But are you
sure it's--safe?"

Mr. Dingley laughed. "My dear Miss Ellie, we don't live in the dark
ages!"

He made me feel ashamed of my hesitations. I went back into the hall,
told the Mexican in Spanish, yes, that I would come quickly. He seemed
satisfied with this verbal message, and I watched him shuffle down the
steps, in spite of his loose-hung gait, with admirable quickness. Then
I told Lee that I was going out; dinner at half-past two, all as simply
and usually as if I had been intending merely to stroll over to the
beach. But there the usualness of things ended.

Mr. Dingley did not at all take the way I expected, the most direct and
open way by the broad easy streets, where at this hour of Sunday the
church-goers were promenading;