ilege to exchange speech with one gentler and
more courteous than that self-accused murderer.

Yet still the motive was elusive. In this particular, Tristrem hindered
everybody to the best of his ability. He was resolutely mute.

The attorney who was retained for the defence--not, however, through any
wish of Tristrem's--could make nothing of his client. "It is pathetic,"
he said; "he keeps telling me that he is guilty, that he is sane, that
he is infinitely indebted for my kindness and sympathy, _but that he
does not wish to be defended_. Sane? He is no more sane than the King of
Bavaria. Who ever heard of an inmate of the Tombs that did not want to
be defended? Isn't that evidence enough?"

It was possible, of course, to impugn the testimony of the committee,
but the attorney in this instance deemed it wiser to let it go for what
it was worth, while showing that Tristrem, if sane at the time of the
committee's examination, was insane at the time the crime, if crime
there were, was committed. It was his settled conviction that if
Tristrem would only explain the motive, it would be of such a nature
that the chances of acquittal would be in his favor. In this,
presumably, he was correct. But, in default of any explanation, he
determined that the only adoptable line of defence was the one already
formulated; to wit, that in slaying Weldon his client was temporarily
deranged.

Meanwhile he expressed his conviction to the grief-stricken old man by
whom he had been retained, and who himself had tried, unavailingly, to
learn the cause. Whether he divined, or not, what it really was, is a
matter of relative unimportance. In any event, he had discovered that on
leaving Weldon's house Tristrem, instead of giving himself up at once,
which he would have done had he at the time intended to do so at all,
had gone directly to Miss Raritan.

And one day he, too, went to her. "You can save him," he said.

He might as well have asked alms of a statue. He went again, but the
result was the same. And then a third time he went to her, and on his
knees, with clasped and trembling hands, in a voice broken and
quavering, he besought her to save his grandson from the gallows. "Come
to court," he pleaded; "if you will only come to court!"

"I will come," the girl at last made answer, "I will come to see him
sentenced."

Such is the truth about Tristrem Varick. In metropolitan drawing-rooms
it was noticed that since Miss Raritan's retur