"With muffled oars?" she asked scornfully.
"Why yes," he said innocently. He was impervious to her scorn.
"Dad, you must listen to me!" she cried.
"This is man's work," he said, swelling up. "You must leave it to me."
A sick horror overcame her, that men were so insensible to the truth. What could one do with them? It was evident from the whole tone of the story she had read that men had already made up their minds as to Counsell's guilt. Let one of them raise the cry and all were ready to give tongue as thoughtlessly as a pack of hounds. It was not the desire for justice that moved them but a sort of blood lust. They would try him with all their solemn farcical forms of justice, but none the less he would be railroaded to a shameful death!
"Dad! You mustn't. You don't know what you're doing!" she murmured, swaying.
He stared his displeasure. "Pendleton, is it possible that you ... that this young man..."
She contrived some sort of a laugh. "What nonsense!"
He turned out of the door saying: "I must act at once."
Pen gasped: "Dad!" and keeled over on a chair. The swoon was perfectly genuine, but she lost consciousness only for the space of a breath, and thereafter her wits worked with the swiftness of desperation. He was deaf to truth, to reason, to sense, very well then, she must use a woman's weapons against him. It was Pendleton's transports of distress that gave her her cue.