"You wish to speak to me?" he asked blankly, as he drew a chair to the hearth rug. "Will you not sit down?"
There was an unfriendly question in his eyes, and she met it boldly with the old dash of impulse.
"They told me that to-morrow would be too late," she said. "I went to Ben Galt's to ask him to come to you in my place, but he is out of town. I found you there instead. It is a matter of life and death to me, so I came."
She sat down in the chair he had drawn up for her, her muff fell to the floor, and he placed it upon the desk where the petition lay unrolled. As he did so he saw the list of names that presented the appeal—judge, jury, prosecuting attorney, all were there.
She followed his gaze and moved slightly towards him. "It can't be true that you—that you will not—" she said.
He was stirring the fire into flame, but as she broke off he turned squarely upon her.
"I have not looked into the case," he answered harshly.
He was standing beside his own hearthstone and he was at ease. There was no awkwardness about him now; his height endowed him with majesty, and in his inflexible face there was no suggestion of heaviness. He looked a man with a sublime self-confidence.
Her colour beat quickly back, warming her eyes.
"Oh, I am so glad," she said. "When you know all you will do as we ask you, because it is right and just. If he did not serve that two years' sentence he has served six years of poverty and sickness. He is a wreck—we should not know him, they say—and he has not seen his wife and children for—"