"No," said Jeffrey. "I asked him if I could. He agreed to it. Said I might use his name. He's no family to squirm under it."
"You feel he was unjustly sentenced," the colonel concluded.
"Oh, no. He doesn't either. He mighty well deserved what he got. Been better perhaps if he'd got more. What I had in mind was to tell how a man came to be a robber."
Lydia winced at the word. Jeffrey had been commonly called a defaulter, and she was imperfectly reconciled to that: certainly not to a branding more ruthless still.
"I've watched him a good deal," said Jeffrey. "We've had some talk together. I can see how he did what he did, and how he'd do it again. It'll be a study in criminology."
"When does he—come out?" Anne hesitated over this. She hardly knew a term without offence.
"Next year."
"But," said she, "you wouldn't want to publish a book about him and have him live it down?"
"Why shouldn't I?" asked Jeffrey, turning on her. "He's willing."
"He can't be willing," Lydia broke in. "It's frightful."