A silence more eloquent than the loudest praise fell upon the little group gathered around the editor’s table. Hobart was the first to break it. “It was very like him,” he said softly; “like the George Brant I used to know and love in the old days. But in our admiration we mustn’t lose sight of his peril. What are we to do?” The judge shook his head. “While we have cleared up many of the mysteries, we are still far from having a reasonable excuse for asking the Governor’s intervention. If I go to him with the story of these later discoveries he may justly say that these things have no bearing upon our case and refuse to grant a reprieve. I presume it is sufficiently clear to all of us now that this unknown man who broke into Brant’s room and stole his clothes is the man who killed James Harding. But we can neither prove this nor establish the motive. If we could identify this man, and so be enabled to find him, we might be able to show why he shot a person with whom, by all accounts, he was on friendly terms.” While the judge was speaking, Jarvis was sketching a crude outline of a human face on the blotter under his hand. He did it mechanically, and without realizing that he was trying to draw the features of the man of many descriptions. When he did realize it, he passed the blotter across to Hobart with a query. “Does that remind you of anybody you have ever seen?” Hobart shook his head. “I didn’t suppose it would,” said the reporter, taking the blotter and beginning to obliterate the picture by adding a bushy beard and a bristling mustache to the face. The judge and Forsyth were anxiously discussing the advisability of calling in the senior member of a great law firm to act as a go-between in the appeal to the Governor, the editor urging it and the lawyer objecting on the score of time. “It is my impression that he isn’t in town,” the judge was saying. “And, in any event, what is done must be done quickly. It is a matter of hours for Brant now.” Hobart took no part in the discussion. He was leaning over the reporter’s shoulder watching the strokes of the idle pencil. Suddenly he put out his hand and stopped it: “Hold on a minute; that begins to look something like a man I’ve seen somewhere. Let me think.” The exclamation drew the attention of the others, and they examined the sketch while the assayer was trying to recall the suggestion. “Let me look at it again,” he said, and he knitted his brows over it for a breathless minute while they waited in silence. “I can’t place it,” he added, at length. “I thought at first it looked a little like the man Isaac Gasset.” “Who is he?” asked the reporter. “Didn’t I mention him by name? He is the ruffian who shot Harding’s sister in the affray at Gaynard’s--the fellow that Brant winged and would have killed, if I had let him.” The editor’s pivot chair made a quick half circle, and Forsyth smote upon the table with his fist in an ecstasy of exprobration.