"Not guilty."
Impossible to describe the commotion in the court. No one was calm save Willi, who leaned stunned against the wall, and only opened her eyes when she felt her head resting against a beating heart, and two arms flung around her neck, as they had often been flung when she was a small, weak child. The Holt farmer whispered softly into the ear of his rescued child, words that sank into her heart, as though no curious crowd surrounded her. When at last she found words she stammered with dry lips—
"Mother, where is mother?"
Then there flashed a look like sheet lightning across the old man's face.
"Mother is ill, very, very ill; perhaps we shall no longer find her."
"Oh, come, father; quick, let us go," said Willi, and she drew him away so eagerly the old man could hardly follow.
On the threshold of the farm they stood still a second; Willi laid her hand on her heart, but it would not be calmed.
"Father," she whispered, "father, I am afraid."
"I, too," he said softly, from his inmost soul.