he least slip on my part might awaken the whole
world to the fact that it could only have come there through the agency
of Carmel herself.

What Mr. Moffat thought of it--what he hoped to prove in the prisoner's
behalf by raking this subject over--it was left for me to discover
later. The prisoner was an innocent man, in his eyes. I was not; and,
while the time had not come for him to make this openly apparent, he was
not above showing even now that the case contained a factor which
weakened the prosecution--a factor totally dissociated with the openly
accepted theory that the crime was simply the result of personal
cupidity and drunken spite.

And in this he was right. It did weaken it--weakened it to the point of
collapse, if the counsel for the defence had fully acted up to his
opportunity. But something withheld him. Just at the moment when I feared
the truth must come out, he hesitated and veered gradually away from this
subject. In his nervous pacings to and fro before the witness stand, his
eye had rested for a moment on Arthur's, and with this result. The
situation was saved, but at a great loss to the defendant.

I began to cherish softened feelings towards Arthur Cumberland, from this
moment. Was it then, or later, that he began in his turn to cherish new
and less hostile feelings towards myself? He had hated me and vowed my
death if I escaped the fate he could now dimly see opening out before
himself; yet I could see that he was glad to see me slip from my
tormentor's hands with my story unimpeached, and that he drew his breath
more deeply and with much more evidence of freedom, now that my testimony
had been thoroughly sifted and nothing had come to light implicating
Carmel. I even thought I caught a kindly gleam in his eye as it met mine
at this critical juncture, and by its light I understood my man and what
he hoped from me. He wished me at any risk to himself, to unite with him
in saving Carmel's good name. That I should accede to this; that I should
respect his generous wishes and let him go to unmerited destruction for
even so imperative an obligation as we both lay under, was a question for
the morrow. I could not decide upon it to-day--not while the smallest
hope remained that he would yet escape conviction by other means than the
one which would wreck the life we were both intent on saving.

Several short examinations followed mine, all telling in their nature,
all calculated to fix in the minds