Part 41

The prisoner was lying on a pallet in the corner of his cell, and he raised himself on his elbow when Harley and Hobart entered.

"You are writers for the papers?" he said.

"Yes, clean from New York; they are with Jimmy Grayson," the jailer answered for them.

"I don't know as I've got anythin' to say to you," continued the prisoner. "I 'ain't got no picture to give you, an' if I had one I wouldn't give it. I don't want my hangin' to be all wrote up in the papers, with pictures an' things, too, jest to please the people in the East. If I've got to die, I'd rather do it quiet and peaceful, among the boys I know. I ain't no free circus."

"We did not come to write you up; it was for another purpose," Harley hastened to say.

He was surprised at the youth of the prisoner, who obviously was not over twenty-one, a mere boy, with good features and a look half defiant, half appealing.

"Well, what did you come for, then?" asked the boy.

Harley was unable to answer this question, and he looked at Hobart as if to indicate the one who would reply. The "mystery" man did not seek to evade his responsibility in the least, and promptly said:

"Mr. Boyd, I think you will acquit us of any intention to intrude upon you. It was the best of motives that brought us to you. I have always had an interest in cases of this sort, and when I heard of yours in the train, coming here, I received an impression then which has been strengthened on my arrival in Grayville. I believe you are innocent."

The boy looked up. A sudden flash of gratitude, almost of hope, appeared in his eyes.

"I am!" he cried. "God knows I didn't kill Bill Wofford. He wuz my partner and we wuz like brothers. We did quarrel that mornin'--I don't deny it--and we both had been liquorin'; but I'd never hev struck him a blow of any kind, least of all a foul one."

"Was it not true that you were found with the bloody knife in your hand, standing over his yet warm body?" asked Hobart.

"It's so, but it was somebody else that used the knife. Bill went on ahead, and when I come into the place I saw him on the floor an' the knife in 'im. I was struck all a-heap, but I did what anybody else would 'a' done--I pulled the knife out. And then the fellers come in on me. I was rushed into a trial right away. Of course, I couldn't tell a straight tale; the horror of it was still in my brain, and the effect o' the liquor, too. I got all mixed up--but before God, gen'lemen, I didn't do it."

His tone was strong with sincerity, and his expression was rather that of grief than remorse. Harley, who had had a long experience with all kinds of men in all kinds of situations, did not believe that he was either bad or guilty. Hobart spoke his thoughts aloud.

"I don't think you did it," he said.

"Everybody believes I did," said Boyd, with pathetic resignation, "and I am to be hanged for it. So what does it matter now?"

"I am going to look for the guilty man," said Hobart, decidedly.

Boyd shook his head and lay back on his pallet. The others, with a few words of hope, withdrew, and, when they were outside, Harley said:

"Hobart, were you not wrong to sow the seed of hope in that man's mind when there is no hope?"

"There is hope," replied Hobart; "I have a plan. Don't ask me anything about it--it's vague yet--but I may work it."

Harley glanced at him, and, seeing that he was intense and eager, with his mind concentrated upon this single problem, resolved to leave him to his own course; so he spent part of the day, a wonderful autumn Sunday, in a rocking-chair on the piazza of the hotel, and another part walking with Sylvia. He told her of the murder case and Hobart's action, and her prompt sympathy was aroused.

"Suppose he should really be innocent?" she said. "It would be an awful thing to hang an innocent man."

"So it would. He certainly does not look like a bad fellow, but you know that those who are not bad are sometimes guilty. In any event I fail to see what Hobart can do."

After the walk, which was all too brief, he returned to his rocking-chair on the piazza, but Grayville, being a small place, he knew everything that was going on within it, by means of a sort of mental telepathy that the born correspondent acquires. He knew, for instance, that Hobart was all the time with one or the other of the three witnesses--Metzger, Thorpe, or Williams--for the moment the most important persons in Grayville by reason of their conspicuous connection with the great case.

When Hobart returned, the edge of the sun was behind the highest mountains; but he took no notice of Harley, walking past him without a word and burying himself somewhere in the interior of the hotel. Harley learned subsequently that he went directly to Jimmy Grayson's room, and remained there at least half an hour, in close conference with the candidate himself.

The next day was a break in the great campaign. Owing to train connections, which are not trifles in the Far West, it was necessary, in order to complete the schedule, to spend an idle day at some place, and Grayville had been selected as the most comfortable and therefore the most suitable. And so the luxurious rest of the group was continued for twenty-four hours for all--save Hobart.

Harley had never before seen the "mystery" man so eager and so full of suppressed excitement. He frequently passed his comrades, but he rarely spoke to them, or even noticed them; his mind was concentrated now upon a great affair in which they would be of no avail. Harley learned, however, that he was still much in the company of the three witnesses, although he asked him no questions. Late in the afternoon he saw him alone and walking rapidly towards the hotel. It seemed to Harley that Hobart's head was borne somewhat high and in a manner exultantly, as if he were overcoming obstacles, and he was about to ask him again in regard to his progress, but Hobart once more sped by without a word and went into the hotel. Harley learned later that he held a secret conference with Jimmy Grayson.

In the evening everybody went to the opera-house to hear the candidate, but on the way Hobart said, casually, to Harley: "Old man, I don't think I'll sit in front to-night. I wish you would let me have your notes afterwards." "Of course," replied Harley, as he passed down the aisle and found his chair at the correspondents' table on the stage.