“Not a bit of it. Would you like to know how I got out of it in the end? I was able to show that my beast of a husband committed the murder.” “Bless my soul!” again fell from the lips of the poor minister. “The magistrate was such a bally ass. He brayed all through my best scene during an uninterrupted run of forty weeks—and there was nothing I could do about it. You see he was an actor-manager and there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can keep an actor-manager from hogging—” “Thank God!” murmured Mr. Sage, mopping his brow. “It was in a play?” “Certainly, my dear,” said she patiently. “I wore this very dress in the trial scene.” It was after eleven o’clock when Oliver’s friends departed. He stood on the porch and watched them drive off in the two automobiles. A few persons had stopped at the bottom of the drive to see who were in the cars. The flaring head-lights fell upon white, indistinct faces and then almost instantly left them in pitch darkness. “I wish you had let Mr. Sage marry you and Jane to-night, Oliver,” said Mrs. Grimes, at his side on the top step. “You have the license and everything, and it could all have been over in a few minutes. And Jane begged you so hard.” “I couldn’t do it, Aunt Serepta,” he said dejectedly. “I don’t know what is ahead of me. I may be in jail before I’m a day older.” He gave her a wry, bitter smile as he put his arm over her shoulder and walked beside her into the house. “Pleasant thought, isn’t it, old dear?—as the celebrated Miss Judge would say.” Clay Street was almost deserted as Lansing and Sammy Parr drove through it after leaving the Baxter place. The Sages were in the former’s car. In front of the hotel Sammy, who was some distance ahead and who had dropped the two old men at Silas Link’s home, slowed down and waited for Lansing to draw alongside. “Say, Doc, it seems queer to me that there’s practically nobody in the streets,” he said. “An hour ago you couldn’t have got through here without blowing the horn every ten feet. Women and children all over the place.” “It’s after eleven, Sammy. I daresay the thrill has worn off and everybody’s gone home to bed.” “Rumley is not an all night town,” remarked Mrs. Sage from the back seat. “It used to go to bed _en masse_ at nine o’clock. I daresay the movies keep them up later than prayer-meeting did in the old days.” “I don’t mind saying to you all that there was a lot of ugly talk earlier in the evening,” said Sammy uneasily. “A lot of nasty talk. I didn’t tell Oliver, but I heard more than one man say he ought to be strung up.” “Oh, Sammy, do you think—” began Jane, in a sudden agony of alarm. “Nonsense!” cried the minister, instantly sensing her fear. “Such things don’t happen in these days and in this part of the country. The people will let the law take its course. Have no fear on that score.”