“A good part of what has happened, and all that is going to happen. Mr. Brant was in that place last night because I had asked him to go. He was looking for Will, to bring him home.”
“But you say you had asked him. How could that be?”
Dorothy dried her eyes and told the whole story bravely, beginning with the chance meeting in Mr. Crosswell’s study, and ending by handing her father the two notes received from Brant. The judge read the notes thoughtfully and the lines of anxiety deepened in his face.
“You did it for the best, and no one could have foreseen such terrible consequences. It was a most natural thing for you to do, and I am far from reproaching you. But you are right; this complicates the affair most grievously. It makes us in a certain sense responsible, and that without helping to clear up the mystery. If the young man’s purpose was to rescue William—and that seems to be very evident—why under heaven should he spoil a good deed by committing a murder in the very midst of it?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know! But if I hadn’t sent him he wouldn’t have been there!”
“No, probably not; but you mustn’t try to carry more than your proper share of the burden. Whatever his motive for killing the man, it must surely go back of Harding’s connection with William.”
“If I could only be sure of that!” sighed Dorothy; and then she added hopelessly: “Not that it would make any difference. It is done, and it can never, never be undone.”
“Yes, it would make some difference,” said the father reflectively; “not in fact, but in the ethics of the fact. Nevertheless, it would not greatly lessen our responsibility. We must make this young man’s cause our own now, at any cost.” Here spoke the loyal Southern gentleman.
“And he can be cleared—you can save him?” she faltered, brightening up a little.
But her father shook his head doubtfully at that.