entered young egoist, immature, and
struggling, quite without malice, to make things come her way.

It was quite late in the afternoon when Whitredge made his second visit
to my cell, and this time his attitude was entirely different. Also,
he dropped the curt use of my surname.

"We're going to ignore the question of your culpability for the
present, Bert, and wrestle with the plain facts of the case," was the
way he began on me. "From what you said this morning, I was led to
infer that you had some notion of trying to shift the responsibility to
Mr. Geddis. I won't say that something couldn't be done along that
line; not to do you any good, you understand, but to do other folks a
lot of harm. You could probably roil the water and stir up the mud
pretty badly for all concerned. But in the outcome, and before a jury,
you'd be likely to get the hot end of it. I'll be frank with you. If
I were in your shoes, I'd rather have Geddis for me than against me.
He has money and influence, and you are a young man without either."

"You are trying to advise me to plead guilty?" I asked.

"Oh, of course, the formal plea in court would be 'Not guilty.' I'm
merely advising you not to make the fight vindictive. If you don't,
I'm inclined to believe that Geddis will stand by you and you'll get
off easy."

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I would fight to the last
gasp before I would suffer myself to be tried and condemned for a crime
of which I was innocent. Then the distorted sense of honor got in its
work again. Agatha Geddis's visit was still recent enough to make me
believe that I owed her something.

"You'll have to get me out of it in some way," I returned. "I can't
afford to be convicted."

"Abel Geddis has been a pretty good friend of yours in the past, Bert,"
the lawyer suggested. "You don't want to forget that."

"I'm not forgetting it, and I'm giving him all the credit that is due
him. But you can't blame me for thinking a little of my mother and
sister, and myself. You know what a prison sentence means to a man,
better than I do. I couldn't stand for that."

Whitredge stroked his long chin and looked past me out of the little
grated window.

"We'd hope for the best, of course," he returned. "If we can make it
appear as an error in judgment"--there was that cursed phrase
again--"without any real criminal intention, and if we can prove that
you didn't reap any monetary benefit from the t