me, a sudden terror in his soul--"you _can't_ mean that _I_ did
this!"

But he gazed into the faces of six men, upon whom rested the duty of
vengeance for the wrong done to the society which they represented. Of
these six all but two were openly hostile to him, and those two were
sad. Rawlins, minister of the Church of Christ; Nels Jorgens, the
blacksmith--they two were sad. But they two also were citizens.

"This witness," went on Coroner Blackman, "has in a way both abused us
and defied us. He said he was not on trial. That is true. We can't try
him. All we can do is to hold any man on whom a reas'nable suspicion of
this crime may be fixed. We could hold several suspects here, if there
was that many. All we do is to pass the whole question on to the grand
jury when it meets here. That's tomorrow morning. Before the grand jury
any man accused can have his own counsel and the case can be taken up
more conclusive. So the question for us now is, Shall we call it 'party
or parties unknown,' or shall we----"

Don Lane dropped into a seat, his face in his hands, in his heart the
bitter cry that all the world and all the powers of justice governing
the world had now utterly forsaken him. The sheriff rose, and taking him
by the arm, led him into another room.

In ten minutes a half-dozen reporters, trooping up from the train and
waiting impatiently at the outer door, knew the nature of the verdict:
"We the jury sitting upon the body of Joel Tarbush, deceased by
violence, find that deceased came to his death by a blow from a blunt
instrument held in the hands of Dieudonne Lane."

CHAPTER XII

ANNE OGLESBY

Judge William Henderson was sitting alone in the front room of his cool
and spacious office, before him his long table with its clean glass top,
so different from the work-bench of the average country lawyer.
Everything about him was modern and perfect in his office equipment, for
the judge had reached the period in his development in which he brought
in most of his own personal ideas from an outer and a wider world--that
same world which now occupied him as a field proper for one of his
ambitions.

As he sat he was a not unpleasing figure of middle-aged success. His
gray hair was swept back smoothly from his temples; his red cheeks,
fresh reaped, bore the tinge of health. The large white hand before him
on the glass-topped table betokened prosperity and success in every
faint and fat-hid line.

Judge Hend