Rexhill, who had been really frightened at her hysterical threat of exposure, and assailed by it in his pride as well, felt his fear begin to leave him and his confidence in himself return. In the next minute or two, he thought rapidly and to considerable purpose. In the past he had resolutely refused to use his child in any way to further his own ends, but the present occasion was an emergency, and major surgery is often demanded in a crisis. If she were willing, as she said, to sacrifice him, he felt that he might properly make use of her and her moods to save himself and her as well. He realized that if she were to shout abroad through Crawling Water the conversation that had passed between him and Moran, the likelihood of either of the two men getting out of the county alive would be extremely remote. "So that was it, eh? And I complimented you upon your good sense!" His laugh was less of an effort now. "Well, doesn't it hold good now as well as it did then? Come, my dear, sit down and we'll thresh this out quietly." She shook her head stubbornly, but the woman in her responded to the new note of confidence in his voice, and she waited eagerly for what he had to say, hopeful that he might still clear himself. "You tell me that I must fight fair. Well, I usually do fight that way. I'm doing so now. When I spoke yesterday of crushing Wade, I meant it and I still mean it. But there are limits to what I want to see happen to him; for one thing, I don't want to see him hung for this Jensen murder, even if he's guilty." "You know he isn't guilty." "I think he isn't." Her eyes lighted up at this admission. "But he must be tried for the crime, there's no dodging that. The jury will decide the point; we can't. But even if he should be convicted, I shouldn't want to see him hung. Why, we've been good friends, all of us. I--I like him, even though he did jump on to me yesterday. That was why"--he leaned forward, impelled to the falsehood that hung upon his tongue by the desperate necessity of saving himself his daughter's love and respect--"I arranged with Moran to have the boy arrested on such a warrant. He is bound to be arrested"--Rexhill struck the table with his fist--"and if he should need a basis for an appeal after conviction, he could hardly have a better one than the evidence of conspiracy, which a crooked warrant would afford. I wanted to give him that chance because I realized that he had enemies here and that his trial might not be a fair one. When the right moment came I was going to have that warrant looked into." "Father!" Helen dropped on her knees before him, her eyelashes moist with tears and her voice vibrant with happiness. "Why didn't you explain all that before, Father? I knew that there must be _some_ explanation. I felt that I couldn't have loved you all my life for nothing. But do you really believe that any jury would convict Gordon of such a thing?" "I hope not."