Meanwhile Bessie had, as a matter of course, plans for saving her lover; and these plans, almost as a matter of course too, were mainly impracticable. As with all young people and almost all women, she rebelled against the fixed procedures of society when they seemed likely to trample on the dictates of her affections. Now that it was her lover who was under suspicion of murder, it did not seem a necessity to her that the law should take its course, and, on the contrary, it seemed to her an atrocity. She knew that he was guiltless; she knew that he was suffering; why should he be tried? When told that he must have every legal advantage, she assented to it eagerly, and drove at once to see Mr. Patterson, and overwhelmed him with tearful implorations “to do everything,—to do everything that could be done,—yes, in short, to do everything.” But still she could not feel that anything ought to be done, except to release at once this beautiful and blameless victim, and to make him every conceivable apology. As for bringing him before a court, to answer with his life whether he were innocent or guilty, it was an injustice and an outrage which she rebelled against with all the energy of her ardent nature. Who could prevent this infamy? In her ignorance of the machinery of justice, it seemed to her that her grandfather might. Notwithstanding the little sympathy that there had been between them, she went to the grim old man with her sorrows and her plans, proposing to him to arrest the trial. In her love and her simplicity she would have appealed to a mountain or to a tiger. “What!” roared the Squire. “Stop the trial? Can’t do it. I’m not the prosecutor. The State’s attorney is the prosecutor.” “But can’t you say that you think the proof against him is insufficient?” urged Bessie. “Can’t you go to them and say that? Won’t that do it?” “Lord bless you!” replied Squire Lauson, staring in wonder at such ignorance, and dimly conscious of the love and sorrow which made it utter its simplicities. “O grandfather! do have pity on him and on me!” pleaded Bessie.