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By Root 20176 0

his way alone. And it was because of advice from her that he had written her husband’s rich brother in Lycurgus, which led to his going there—a series of statements which caused Clyde in his cell to tingle with a kind of prideful misery and resentment and forced him to write his mother and complain. Why need she always talk so much about the past and the work that she and his father were connected with, when she knew that he had never liked it and resented going on the streets? Many people didn’t see it as she and his father did, particularly his uncle and cousin and all those rich people he had come to know, and who were able to make their way in so different and much more brilliant fashion. And now, as he said to himself, Sondra would most certainly read this—all that he had hoped to conceal.

Yet even in the face of all this, because of so much sincerity and force in his mother, he could not help but think of her with affection and respect, and because of her sure and unfailing love for him, with emotion. For in answer to his letter she wrote that she was sorry if she had hurt his feelings or injured him in any way. But must not the truth be shown always? The ways of God were for the best and surely no harm could spring from service in His cause. He must not ask her to lie. But if he said the word, she would so gladly attempt to raise the necessary money and come to his aid—sit in his cell and plan with him—holding his hands—but as Clyde so well knew and thought at this time and which caused him to decide that she must not come yet—demanding of him the truth— with those clear, steady blue eyes of hers looking into his own. He could not stand that now.

For, frowning directly before him, like a huge and basalt headland above a troubled and angry sea, was the trial itself, with all that it implied—the fierce assault of Mason which he could only confront, for the most part, with the lies framed for him by Jephson and Belknap. For, although he was constantly seeking to salve his conscience with the thought that at the last moment he had not had the courage to strike Roberta, nevertheless this other story was so terribly difficult for him to present and defend—a fact which both Belknap and Jephson realized and which caused the latter to appear most frequently at Clyde’s cell door with the greeting: “Well, how’s tricks to-day?”

The peculiarly rusty and disheveled and indifferently tailored character of Jephson’s suits! The worn and disarranged effect of his dark brown soft hat, pulled low over his eyes! His long, bony, knotty hands, suggesting somehow an enormous tensile strength. And the hard, small blue eyes filled with a shrewd, determined cunning and courage, with which he was seeking to inoculate Clyde, and which somehow did inoculate him!

“Any more preachers around to-day? Any more country girls or Mason’s boys?” For during this time, because of the enormous interest aroused by the pitiable death of Roberta, as well as the evidence of her rich and beautiful rival, Clyde was being visited by every type of shallow crime-or-sex-curious country bumpkin lawyer, doctor, merchant, yokel evangelist or minister, all friends or acquaintances of one or another of the officials of the city, and who, standing before his cell door betimes, and at the most unexpected moments, and after surveying him with curious, or resentful, or horrified eyes, asked such questions as: “Do you pray, brother? Do you get right down on your knees and pray?” (Clyde was reminded of his mother and father at such times.) Had he made his peace with God? Did he actually deny that he had killed Roberta Alden? In the case of three country girls: “Would you mind telling us the name of the girl you are supposed to be in love with, and where she is now? We won’t tell any one. Will she appear at the trial?” Questions which Clyde could do no more than ignore, or if not, answer as equivocally or evasively or indifferently as possible. For although he was inclined to resent them, still was he not being constantly instructed by both Belknap and Jephson that for the