been tried and convicted of
it; they mean in this case that he has committed a murder!"

"A murder!"

"For which he was convicted and sentenced."

"Sentenced!"

"Yes; and is alive now only because before the sentence could be
carried out, he escaped. That man, Philip Eaton, is Hugh--"

"Hugh!"

"Hugh Overton, Harry!"

"Hugh Overton!"

"Yes; I found it out to-day. The police have just learned it, too. I
was coming to tell your father. He's Hugh Overton, the murderer of
Matthew Latron!"

Harriet fought herself free. Denial, revolt stormed in her. "It isn't
so!" she cried. "He is not that man! Hugh--his name is Hugh; but he
is not Hugh Overton. Mr. Warden said Hugh--this Hugh had been greatly
wronged--terribly wronged. Mr. Warden tried to help Hugh even at the
risk of his own life. He would not--nobody would have tried to help
Hugh Overton!"

"Mr. Warden probably had been deceived."

"No; no!"

"Yes, Harry; for this man is certainly Hugh Overton."

"It isn't so! I know it isn't so!"

"You mean he told you he was--some one else, Harry?"

"No; I mean--" She faced him defiantly. "Father let me keep the
photograph! I asked him, and he said, 'Do whatever you wish with it.'
He knew I meant to keep it! He knows who Hugh is, so he would not have
said that, if--if--"

She heard a sound behind her and turned. Her father had come into the
room. And as she saw his manner and his face she knew that what Avery
had just told her was the truth. She shrank away from them. Her hands
went to her face and hid it.

So this was that unknown thing which had stood between herself and
Hugh--that something which she had seen a hundred times check the
speech upon his lips and chill his manner toward her! Hadn't Hugh
himself told her--or almost told her it was something of that sort? He
had said to her on the train, when she urged him to defend himself
against the charge of having attacked her father, "If I told them who I
am, that would make them only more certain their charge is true; it
would condemn me without a hearing!" And his being Hugh Overton
explained everything.

She knew now why it was that her father, on hearing Hugh's voice, had
become curious about him, had tried to place the voice in his
recollection--the voice of a prisoner on trial for his life, heard only
for an instant but fixed upon his mind by the circumstances attending
it, though those circumstances afterward had been forgotte