e trying to put over,"
was Whitredge's summing up of the situation. "You'll have to loosen
up, Weyburn, if you expect to get any help. I'll come around again
this afternoon, and maybe by that time you will have taken a tumble to
yourself."

He got up, rattled the door for the turnkey, and then wheeled upon me
with a sharp question.

"I take it you've got a little ready money hid away somewhere, haven't
you?" he demanded.

I told him I had; but when I added that my savings were all in the bank
he swore impatiently.

"That will mean an order from the court before you can even pay your
counsel's retainer--always providing your account hasn't already been
attached to apply on the shortage," he snapped; and at that the
corridor officer came to let him out and he went away.

Having lived in Glendale practically all my life, I had a good right to
expect that at least a few of my friends would rally to my support in
the time of trouble. They came, possibly a half-dozen of them in all,
between Whitredge's visit and old John Runnels's bringing of my dinner
at one o'clock.

Who they were, and what they said to me, are matters which shall be
burled in the deepest pit of oblivion I can find or dig. For the best
of them, in the turning of a single leaf in the lifebook, I had
apparently become an outcast, a pariah. One and all, they had already
tried and condemned me unheard, and though there were clammy-handed
offers of assistance they were purely perfunctory, as I could see, and
there was never a man of them all to say heartily, "Bert Weyburn, I
don't believe it of you." It wasn't the fault of any of these cold
comfort bringers that the milk of human kindness didn't turn to vinegar
in me that day, or that I did not drink the cup of bitterness and
isolation to the very dregs.

I know now, of course, that I was boyishly hot-hearted and unfair; that
I was too young and inexperienced to make allowances for that deathless
trait in human nature--in all animate nature--which prompts the well to
recoil instinctively from the pest-stricken. Later on--but I needn't
anticipate.

It was along in the latter part of the afternoon, and before
Whitredge's return, that Agatha came. Her appearance in my cell was a
total surprise. I was standing at the little grated window when I
heard footsteps in the corridor. I thought it was Whitredge coming
back, and was morose enough not to turn or look around until after the
door had opene