“I cannot, sir. It is connected with a great wrong committed years ago, and involves the name of my mother. I _cannot_ unveil the past before the curious rabble gathered here—no, not even if I have to serve out a ten-years’ sentence for keeping silent,” Earle said, firmly, but with deep emotion. Editha’s evidence—since she was the first to see and recognize him on the night of the robbery—went further than almost anything else toward condemning him, even though it was given with such reluctance, together with her oft-asserted belief that he was innocent. The tender-hearted, loyal girl would rather have had her tongue paralyzed than to have been obliged to speak the words which so told against him. Earle was cross-examined and recross-questioned, but he told the same story every time, never swerving in a single particular from his first statements. Every possible way was tried to make him confess who his accomplices were, the opposing counsel maintaining that he must have had one or more. But he always replied: “I had no accomplice, for I have neither planned nor executed any robbery.” “But you assert that two men came out of the house.” “I encountered two men at the corner of Mr. Dalton’s house; one I surprised and felled to the ground, and then grappled with the other. During the scuffle the first one got up and ran off with the bag which contained their booty. I then received a blow which stunned and felled me, and when I came to myself again both were gone. I know nothing of either them or their plunder, and I am innocent of any complicity in the matter.” But all was of no avail against the positive evidence which opposed him, and the fatal verdict was spoken, the fearful sentence pronounced. Popular sympathy inclined strongly toward the unfortunate young man, whom many knew and respected for his hitherto stainless character, while his appearance, so noble and manly, prepossessed almost every one in his favor. As before stated, he had come to Richard Forrester when a youth of seventeen, asking for work, and the great lawyer had employed him as an office boy, and it was not long before he came to feel a deep interest in the intelligent lad. He saw that he had what lawyers term “a long head,” and could grasp all the details of a case almost as readily as he himself could, and he resolved that he would educate him for the profession. Mr. Forrester was a bachelor of great wealth, and exceedingly fond of his beautiful and vivacious niece, Editha Dalton, who, report said, was to be his heiress. She was a slight, sprightly girl of fourteen when Earle Wayne came into her uncle’s employ, and a mutual admiration sprang up between them at once, and steadily increased, until, on the part of the young man, it grew into a deep and abiding love, although he had never presumed to betray it by so much as a look or tone.