"Found me where?" he repeated for the third time.
"You insist?"
"It is my r-right."
"They found you in—in the jail."
Mrs. Carroll turned away from the wretched man before her and sobbed undisguisedly. On them fell a quiet pregnant with emotion. The hush was broken by the crash of a tea-cup upon which Friedrich's fingers had happened to fall.
"Bob secured the nurses and drove one of them out in the buggy, and the Doctor and the other one brought you in the carriage."
"Why did they let me go from the—jail?"
"The Doctor paid your fine."
Often during the preceding weeks Mrs. Carroll had thought of this conversation with von Rittenheim, and the statement that she had just made always had figured as the climax of her argument in the Doctor's behalf. Now she felt no pleasure in it. The man before her was too crushed for her to exult over. He made no comment, merely said, reflectively,—
"Yes, there was a fine. It comes to me,—'one hundred dollars or three months.' It is the last thing I r-remember."