I'd better not risk you on the train with just one Glendale constable;
that I'd better send a rig and two deputies after you, if I wanted to
make sure o' seein' you. What have you done with Simmons?"

I told him briefly.

"All right," he said. "Climb down out o' that and come on in. The
jig's up."

It was not until I was standing on the sidewalk beside the gigantic
sheriff, with the Irishman grinning at me from his seat in the hack,
that I realized fully what had happened. Instead of taking me to
Vilasville, the driver, who was Simmons's partner and fellow deputy,
had changed his route while I was asleep and brought me to the county
seat.

III

In the Name of the Law

Of course, I didn't have to wait until Whitredge came over to the
county seat to learn that I had hopelessly cooked my goose by the
clumsy attempt at an escape. What I did not suspect then, nor, indeed,
for a long time afterward, was the possibility that Withers or Geddis,
or both of them, had forestalled me in the matter of bribing the two
deputies; that my foolish attempt had been anticipated, and that
Whitredge, himself, was not wholly above suspicion as an accessory
before the fact. For it was his thinly veiled suggestion that put the
thing into my head.

However, that is neither here nor there. With the charge before it,
the grand jury quickly brought in a true bill against me; and on the
plea of the county prosecuting attorney my case was advanced on the
docket and set for trial within the week, the argument for haste being
the critical state of affairs in the business of the Farmers' Bank of
Glendale; a state of affairs which demanded that the responsibility for
certain shortages in the bank's assets be fixed immediately as between
the accused bookkeeper and cashier and his superiors. Whitredge
brought me word of this hurry-up proposal, and either was, or pretended
to be, properly indignant over the unseemly haste.

"You just say the word, Bert, and I'll have the case postponed until
the next term of court, or else I'll know the reason why!" he blustered
stoutly.

"Why should I wish to have it postponed, when the delay would merely
mean six months more of jail for me?" I objected.

"It might give us some chance to frame up some sort of a defense; and,
besides, it would give public opinion a little time to die down," he
suggested. "I say it isn't fair to try you while everybody's hot and
excited and wrathy about the mone