“Bully for you!” cried Jarvis heartily. “You are the kind of a friend to have at a pinch! Well, there is nothing more to be found out here. Let’s go down and have a drink, and then you’ll tell me more about that burglary business. I was so full of this other thing that I didn’t quite catch on.” “No drinks,” said Antrim briefly when they were once more in the street and Jarvis was pointing for a barroom. “Come up to Mrs. Seeley’s with me, if you like, and I’ll tell you and show you all there is to be heard and seen.” Jarvis acquiesced, grumbling, and the chief clerk was as good as his word. But if the reporter made any fresh discoveries in Brant’s room he kept his own counsel. By this time Antrim was catching at straws. The meeting with Jarvis and the experiment with the tape measure in the card room damped his courage, and left his belief in Brant’s innocence more nearly shaken than it had been at any time during the eventful day. None the less, he remained steadfast, as his last word to Jarvis testified. “You are interested in getting to the bottom of this thing on general principles, aren’t you?” he asked, as he let the reporter out at the street door. “Sure thing.” “I supposed so. Well, you just go ahead on the supposition that Brant didn’t do it, and you will be more likely to succeed. Good night.” “You are a crank,” said the reporter, laughing, as he ran down the steps. And yet such is the impact of one man’s assertion hurled repeatedly against a wall of self-evident fact that Jarvis actually found himself ignoring the evidence and building theories based on the major “if.” He toppled them over as fast as they rose, but they straightway grew again, and it took another conference with his chief, the night editor, to fully fortify his reason against the assaults of Antrim’s insistent faith. CHAPTER XXVIII HOW THE JUDGE GAVE OF HIS BEST HAVING done what he might for his friend on the Saturday, Antrim thought he should not err in devoting the Sunday afternoon to his own affair, and to this end he turned his face to the Highlands as soon as he could break away from the Sunday duties which entangle the railway servant. He was a little later than usual; and Isabel, after waiting half an hour, avenged her pique by going out with Mrs. Hobart. Dorothy, meeting Antrim at the gate as she was starting for the mission school, was unable to tell him whither they had gone. Wouldn’t he go in and wait? Piqued in his turn, Antrim decided he would not go in and wait. He had meant to do no more at present than to try to resume the old relation with Isabel, and he thought she might have suffered this, the more willingly since it was her own expressed wish. But if she were not yet complaisant---- Before he had argued the case to its irritant conclusion he found himself walking townward with Dorothy. They missed a car by a minute or two, and Antrim halted at the corner to wait for the next.