Avery had reached the door, holding it open for her to go out. Suddenly Eaton tore the handle from Avery's grasp, slammed the door shut upon him and braced his foot against it. He would be able to hold it thus for several moments before they could force it open. "Miss Santoine," he pleaded, his voice hoarse with his emotion, "for God's sake, make them think what they are doing before they make a public accusation against me--before they charge me with this to others not on this train! I can't answer what you asked; I can't tell you now about myself; there is a reason--a fair and honest reason, and one which means life or death to me. It will not be merely accusation they make against me--it will be my sentence! I shall be sentenced before I am tried--condemned without a chance to defend myself! That is the reason I could not come forward after the murder of Mr. Warden. I could not have helped him--or aided in the pursuit of his enemies--if I had appeared; I merely would have been destroyed myself! The only thing I could hope to accomplish has been in following my present course--which, I swear to you, has had no connection with the attack upon your father. What Mr. Avery and Connery are planning to do to me, they cannot undo. They will merely complete the outrage and injustice already done me,--of which Mr. Warden spoke to his wife,--and they will not help your father. For God's sake, keep them from going further!" Her color deepened, and for an instant, he thought he saw full belief in him growing in her eyes; but if she could not accept the charge against him, neither could she consciously deny it, and the hands she had been pressing together suddenly dropped. "I--I'm afraid nothing I could say would have much effect on them, knowing as little about--about you as I do!" They dashed the door open then--silenced and overwhelmed him; and they took her from the room and left him alone again. But there was something left with him which they could not take away; for in the moment he had stood alone with her and passionately pleading, something had passed between them--he could give no name to it, but he knew that Harriet Santoine never could think of him again without a stirring of her pulses which drew her toward him. And through the rest of the lonely day and through the sleepless night, he treasured this and thought of it again and again. The following morning the relieving snowplows arrived from the east, and Eaton felt it was the beginning of the end for him. He watched from his window men struggling in the snow about the forward end of the train; then the train moved forward past the shoveled and trampled snow where rock and pieces of the snowplow were piled beside the track--stopped, waited; finally it went on again and began to take up its steady progress.