Morris was leaning against his friend, sobbing like a woman. The sheriff drew his coat-sleeve across his eyes, and shook his head. “What made the nigger run away?” he said, slowly--adding, as if to himself, “God help us!” A vehicle was borrowed, and the judge and the sheriff drove with John Morris over to the station to meet the ten-o'clock train. The sheriff and the judge remained in the little carriage, and the station agent did his best to leave the whole platform to John Morris. As the moments went by the look of anxious agony grew deeper on the face of the waiting man. The sheriff's ominous words, falling like a pall over the first flash of his happiness, had filled his mind with wordless terrors. He could scarcely breathe or move, and could not speak when his wife stepped off and put her hands in his. She looked up, and without a query, without a word of explanation, answered the anguished questioning of his eyes, whispering, “He did not touch me.” Morris staggered a little, then drawing her hand through his arm, he led her to the carriage. She shrank back when she saw the judge and the sheriff on the front seat; but Morris saying, “They must hear your story, dear,” she stepped in. “We are very thankful to see you, Mrs. Morris,” the judge said, without turning his head, when the sheriff had touched up the horse and they moved away; “and if you feel able to tell us how it all happened, it'll save time and ease your mind. This is Mr. Partin, the sheriff.” Mrs. Morris looked at the backs of the men in front of her; at their heads that were so studiously held in position that they could not even have glanced at each other; then up at her husband, appealingly. “Tell it,” he said, quietly, and laid his hand on hers that were wrung together in her lap. “You sent Aggie to catch the chickens, and the dog went with her?” “Yes,” fixing her eyes on his; “and I sent”--she stopped with a shiver, and her husband said, “Abram”--“to cut some bushes to make a broom,” she went on. “I had been for a walk to the old house, and as I came back I laid my gloves and a bit of vine on the steps, intending to return at once; but I wished to see if the boat was safe, for the water was rising so rapidly.” She paused, as if to catch her breath, then, with her eyes still fixed on her husband, she went on, “I did not think that it was safe, and I untied the rope and picked up the paddle that was lying on the dam, intending to drag the boat farther up and tie it to a tree.” She stopped again. Her husband put his arm about her. “And then?” he said.