"If I wasn't held here, I might go!" he said. "I might try for that
five thousand myself!"

Cora was sympathetic enough, of course, but she was fast approaching
the stage where she needed sympathy herself.

"We caught him over on the Purcell farm," mused Duncan. "Something
ailed Ruggam. He was drunk and couldn't run. But that wasn't all. He
had had some kind of crazy-spell during or after the killing and
wasn't quite over it. We tied him and lifted him into the auto. His
face was a sight. His eyes aren't mates, anyhow, and they were wild
and unnatural. He kept shrieking something about a head of
hair--black hair--sticks up like wire. He must have had an awful
impression of Mart's face and that hair of his."

"I remember about Aunt Mary Crumpett's telling me of the trouble her
husband had with his prisoner in the days before the trial," his
wife replied. "He had those crazy-spells often, nights. He kept
yelling that he saw Martin Wiley's head with its peculiar hair, and
his face peering in at him through the cell window. Sometimes he
became so bad that Sheriff Crumpett thought he'd have apoplexy
Finally he had to call Dr. Johnson to attend him."

"Five thousand dollars!" muttered Duncan. "Gawd! I'd hunt the devil
_for nothing_ if I only had a chance of getting out of this bed."

Cora smoothed her husband's rumpled bed, comforted him and laid her
own tired head down beside his hand. When he had dozed off, she
arose and left the room.

In the kitchen she resumed her former place beside the table with
the cheap red cloth; and there, with her face in her hands, she
stared into endless distance.

"Five thousand dollars! Five thousand dollars!" Over and over she
whispered the words, with no one to hear.

The green-birch fire snapped merrily in the range. The draft sang in
the flue. Outside, a soft, feathery snow was falling, for winter
came early in the uplands of Vermont this past year. To Cora McBride,
however, the winter meant only hardship. Within another week she
must go into town and secure work. Not that she minded the labour
nor the trips through the vicious weather! The anguish was leaving
Duncan through those monotonous days before he should be up and
around. Those dreary winter days! What might they not do to
him--alone.

Five thousand dollars! Like many others in the valley that night she
pictured with fluttering heart what it would mean to possess such a
sum of money; but not once in her pitiful flig