“Yes, ma’am,” drawled the sheriff, “in them history days things was fixed up to excuse animal doin’s, kind of neater and easier and more becomin’ than they are now. Well, Mr. Garth, can we have our beds? We’ve kept these ladies up talkin’ long enough. Your mother looks plum wore out.” They slept in the bed usually shared by Pete and Hugh. Pete lay on the floor in the living-room not far from his brother’s hiding-place--lay there rigid and feverish, staring at the night. Sylvie, at Bella’s side, slept no better. Her imagination went over and over the story of Ham Rutherford’s crime. She saw the little dark bookshop, the professor’s thin, sneering face, the hideous anger of the cripple, the blow, the dead body, Rutherford’s arrest. And when her brain was sick, it would turn for relief to the noble story of Hugh’s self-sacrifice, only to be balked by a sense of unreality. What the detective had told, briefly and dryly, lived in her mind convincingly; but Hugh’s romance, that had glowed on his tongue, now lay lifeless on her fancy. Back her mind would go to the bookshop, the gibing professor, the heavy paper-cutter. In the dawn she heard Bella get up with a deep-shaken sigh and go about her preparations for breakfast. But it was noon before the two men left. CHAPTER VIII Hugh came up from his hiding-place like a man risen from the dead. They helped him to his chair before the fire; they poured coffee down him, rubbed his blue, stiff hands. He sat looking up pitifully, his eyes turning from one to the other of them like those of a beaten hound. All the masterfulness, all the bombast, had been crushed out of him; even the splendor of his flaring hazel eyes was dimmed--they were hollow, hopeless, old. For a long time he did not speak, only drank the coffee and submitted himself meekly to their ministrations; then at last he touched Sylvie with a trembling hand. “Sylvie,” he whispered brokenly. “Hugh, dear, you’re safe now; please speak; please laugh; you frighten me more than anything--why is he so silent, Pete? Bella, tell me what’s wrong?” “He’s been crouching there on the damp, cold ground for hours,” said Bella, “not knowing what might happen.” Her voice trembled; she passed a hand as shaking as her voice across Hugh’s bent head. “You’re safe now. You’re safe now,” she murmured. Hugh’s teeth chattered, and he bent closer to the fire. “Ugh--it was cold down there,” he said, “like a grave! Sylvie, come here.” Just an echo of his old imperious fashion it was--though the look was that of a beggar for alms. “Give me those warm little hands of yours.” She knelt close to him, rubbed his hands in hers, looking up at Pete with a tremulous mouth that asked for advice. “He’ll be all right in a minute,” said Pete. “You talk to him, Sylvie.”