“I—I—didn't come down to talk about Mr. Sanders,” Helen found herself saying, as the shortest road from the trying subject. “It seems to me you ought to hate me. I have, I know, through my concern over Pete, caused you endless trouble and loss of political influence. Last night you did what no other man would or could have done. Oh, it was so brave, so noble, so glorious! I laid awake nearly all night thinking about it. Your wonderful speech rang over and over in my ears. I was too excited to cry while it was actually going on, but I shed tears of joy when I thought it all over afterwards.”
“Oh, that wasn't anything!” Dwight said, forcing a light tone, though his flush had died out. “I knew you and Linda wanted the boy saved, and it wasn't anything. I ran no risk. It was only fun—a game of football with a human pigskin snatched here and there by a frenzied mob of players. When it fell of its own accord at my feet, and I had laid hands on it, I would have put it over the line or died trying, especially when you and Sanders—who has beaten me in a grander game—stood looking on. Oh, I'm only natural! I wanted to win because—first, because it was your wish, and—because that man was there.”
Helen's glance fell to the ragged carpet which, clogged with the dried mud of a recent rain, stretched from her feet to the door. Then she looked helplessly round the room at the dusty, open bookshelves, Garner's disreputable desk strewn with pamphlets, printed forms of notes and mortgages, cigar-stubs, and old letters. Her eyes rested longer on the dingy, small-paned windows to which the cobwebs clung.
“You always bring up his name,” she said, almost resentfully. “Is it really quite fair to him?”
“No, it isn't,” he admitted, quickly. “And from this moment that sort of banter is at an end. Now, what can I do for you? You came to speak about Pete.”
She hesitated for a moment. It was almost as if, after all she had said, that if the subject was to be dropped, hers, not his, should be the final word.
“I came to tell you that Mam' Linda and I have just left the jail. She was so wrought up and weak that I made Uncle Lewis take her home in a buggy. He says she didn't close her eyes all last night and this morning refused to touch her breakfast. Then the sight of Pete in his awful condition completely unnerved her. Did you get a good look at him last night, Carson—I mean in the light?”
“No.” Dwight shrugged his broad shoulders. “But he looked bad enough as it was.”
“The sight made me ill,” Helen said. “The jailer let us go into the narrow passage and we saw him through the bars of the cell. I would never have known him in the world. His clothing was all in shreds and his face and arms were gashed and tom, his feet bare and bleeding. Poor mammy simply stood peering through at him and crying, 'My boy, my baby, my baby!' Carson, I firmly believe he is innocent.”
“So do I,” Dwight made prompt answer. “That is, I am reasonably sure of it. I shall know positively when I talk to him to-day.”