He returned in a few moments, ushering in a little worn woman, dressed in decent black, and neither common nor pretentious in appearance. Her age might have been fifty, but the wrinkles of a hundred years lined her forehead, and the very tragedy of death in life haunted her dim eyes. Gilead, always sensitive to sorrow, rose and, motioning Nestle to leave them alone together, placed a chair for the visitor and seated himself where he could best command without embarrassing her. “Am I right, Mrs Baxter,” he said, “in assuming that you are a nurse?” Something neatly formal in her habit may have suggested the hypothesis. It was a correct one in any case. “Yes, sir,” she answered, with a faint expression of surprise. “Ah!” he said. “That is to establish at the outset a claim upon one’s sympathies. Now I am acquainted with the bare facts of this unhappy story, Mrs Baxter. What have you to say to qualify them? I ask you to speak to me with perfect confidence and freedom.” “Thank you, sir, from my heart. I know the value of conciseness, and I will not say a word more than I must.” “Very well. You are convinced of your son’s innocence?” “Charlie is innocent, sir.” “Just so. Now, as to the proofs?” “If such there were, sir, I need not have troubled you.” “To be sure you need not. Let us say, then, the admissible likelihoods?” “It would have been the act of a madman, would it not, knowing that he must be found out?” “Yes?--very well. I do not propose to comment for the moment.” “Secure of such wealth, sir, and having yielded to the temptation, is it likely he would have returned straight to the office, with the property upon him, to risk discovery at the very beginning?” “Now, Mrs Baxter, you must understand that what I say is said with the view to make clear to myself the pros and cons of this business, and is without prejudice to the real truth of the case. I do not know what is the procedure of the Post Office in such matters; but in the event, say, of your son not having been called upon, in the hurry of business, to produce his receipt, until the complaints of the sender of the packet made its production imperative, he would have had plenty of time, would he not, to dispose of the goods?” “He was never, sir, a penny the richer by it.” “I am afraid that proves nothing; and no doubt all these assumptions were taken into consideration at the trial.” The visitor’s small face flushed, and for the first time she bit her lip to keep back the tears. “It was hard, sir,” she said, “that his very innocence should have been used to witness against him, and that his sentence was made the severer because he would not confess to the whereabouts of things he had never stolen.” She was staunch to her fine belief. Gilead felt very pitifully towards the broken little soul.