Dwight leaned over Garner and put his hand on the dusty shoulder. “_That_ would kill my mother, old man!” “Do you think so, Carson?” Garner was deeply moved. “I know it, Garner, and her blood would be on my head.” “Well, we must _win!_” Garner said, and a look of firm determination came into his eyes; “that is all there is about it. We must win. Eternal truth and justice are on our side. We must win.” CHAPTER XLVI. [Illustration: 0403] HE big, square court-room was filled to overflowing when at the last moment Carson and Garner arrived. Just inside the door they found old Dwight standing, his battered silk hat in his hand, and with an air of unwonted humility upon him, patiently awaiting their coming. “Is everything all right?” he anxiously whispered to Garner, as he reached out and caught his son's hand and held on to it. “Yes, all right, Mr. Dwight,” Garner replied; “and is--is your wife--” “Yes, we are safe on that score,” the old man said, encouragingly, to Carson. “I only slipped away for a minute. I won't wait here, but will hurry back and stand guard. God bless you, my boy.” When Dwight had turned towards the door and was moving away, Carson glanced over the crowded room. All eyes were fixed, it seemed to him, anxiously and sympathetically on his face. As he passed through the central aisle to reach the railed-in enclosure where, at his elevated desk, the magistrate sat, gravely consulting with the State solicitor, Carson's mind was gloomily active with the numerous instances in which, to his knowledge, innocent men had been convicted by the complication of circumstantial evidence, in a chair which Braider was solicitously placing near that of Garner, the young man's glance again swept the big room. On the last row of benches sat Linda, Uncle Lewis, and Pete in the company of other negro friends of his. Their fixed and awed facial expressions added to his gloom. Near the railing sat “the gang”--Gordon, Tingle, and Bob Smith--their faces long-drawn. Behind them sat Helen and her father, with Ida Tarpley. Catching Helen's anxious glance, Carson tried to smile lightly as he responded to her bow, but there was something in his act which seemed to him to be empty pretence and rather unworthy of one in his position. Guilty or innocent in the eyes of the law, he told himself he was there to rid his character of the gravest charge that could be made against a human being, and from the indications, as seen by the shrewd Garner, he was not likely to leave the room a free man. He shuddered as he grimly pictured Braider--the feeling, sympathetic Braider--coming to him there before all those eyes and formally placing him under arrest at the order of the court. He sank to the lowest ebb of despair as he pictured his mother's hearing of the news. Almost in a daze Carson sat dumb and blind to the formal proceedings. Like a child, he felt a soothing comfort in the knowledge that he was leaning on such a skilled friend as that of the hardened