"What do you think of the case so far?" "I think"--the words came somewhat slowly--"I think that it looks bad. Bad for the prisoner, I mean," he explained the next moment with a quick flush. "Your sympathies are evidently with Mansell," Hickory quietly remarked. "Yes," was the slow reply. "Not that I think him innocent, or would turn a hair's breadth from the truth to serve him." "He _is_ a manly fellow," Hickory bluntly admitted, after a moment's puff at the pipe he was smoking. "Do you remember the peculiar straightforwardness of his look when he uttered his plea of 'Not guilty,' and the tone he used too, so quiet, yet so emphatic? You could have heard a pin drop." "Yes," returned Mr. Byrd, with a quick contraction of his usually smooth brow. "Have you noticed," the other broke forth, after another puff, "a certain curious air of disdain that he wears?" "Yes," was again the short reply. "I wonder what it means?" queried Hickory carelessly, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. Mr. Byrd flashed a quick askance look at his colleague from under his half-fallen lids, but made no answer. "It is not pride alone," resumed the rough-and-ready detective, half-musingly; "though he's as proud as the best of 'em. Neither is it any sort of make-believe, or _I_ wouldn't be caught by it. 'Tis--'tis--what?" And Hickory rubbed his nose with his thoughtful forefinger, and looked inquiringly at Mr. Byrd. "How should I know?" remarked the other, tossing his stump of a cigar into the fire. "Mr. Mansell is too deep a problem for me." "And Miss Dare too?" "_And_ Miss Dare." Silence followed this admission, which Hickory broke at last by observing: "The day that sees _her_ on the witness stand will be interesting, eh?" "It is not far off," declared Mr. Byrd. "No?" "I think she will be called as a witness to-morrow." "Have you noticed," began Hickory again, after another short interval of quiet contemplation, "that it is only when Miss Dare is present that Mansell wears the look of scorn I have just mentioned." "Hickory," said Mr. Byrd, wheeling directly about in his chair and for the first time surveying his colleague squarely, "I have noticed _this_. That ever since the day she made her first appearance in the court-room, she has sat with her eyes fixed earnestly upon the prisoner, and that he has never answered her look by so much as a glance in her direction. This has but one explanation as I take it. He never forgets that it is through her he has been brought to trial for his life." Mr. Byrd uttered this very distinctly, and with a decided emphasis. But the impervious Hickory only settled himself farther back in his chair, and stretching his feet out toward the fire, remarked dryly: