Joe heard the question dimly. His mind was on Morgan and the white road of the moonlit night when he drove away. No, Morgan would not come. "Will you answer my question?" demanded the prosecutor. Joe turned to him with a start. "Sir?" said he. The prosecutor repeated it, and stood leaning forward for the answer, his hands on the table. Joe bent his head as if thinking it over. And there lay the white road in the moonlight, and the click of buggy wheels over gravel was in his ears, as he knew it must have sounded when Morgan drove away, easy in his loose conscience, after his loose way. Why should he sacrifice the promise of his young life by meekly allowing them to fasten the shadow of this dread tragedy upon him, for which Morgan alone was to blame? It was unfair--it was cruelly unjust! The thought of it was stifling the breath in his nostrils, it was pressing the blood out of his heart! They were waiting for the answer, and why should he not speak? What profit was there in silence when it would be so unjustly interpreted? As Ollie had been thoughtless of Isom, so she might be thoughtless of him, and see in him only a foolish, weak instrument to use to her own advantage. Why should he seal his lips for Ollie, go to the gallows for her, perhaps, and leave the blight of that shameful end upon his name forever? He looked up. His mind had made that swift summing up while the prosecutor's words were echoing in the room. They were waiting for his answer. Should he speak? Mrs. Newbolt had risen. There were tears on her old, worn cheeks, a yearning in her eyes that smote him with an accusing pang. He had brought that sorrow upon her, he had left her to suffer under it when a word would have cleared it away; when a word--a word for which they waited now--would make her dun day instantly bright. Ollie weighed against his mother; Ollie, the tainted, the unclean. His eyes found Ollie's as he coupled her name with his mother's in his mind. She was shrinking against her mother's shoulder--she had a mother, too--pale and afraid. Mrs. Newbolt stretched out her hands. The scars of her toilsome years were upon them; the distortion of the labor she had wrought for him in his helpless infancy was set upon their joints. He was placing his liberty and his life in jeopardy for Ollie, and his going would leave mother without a stay, after her sacrifice of youth and hope and strength for him. Why should he be called upon to do this thing--why, _why_? The question was a wild cry within his breast, lunging like a wolf in a leash to burst his lips. His mother drew a step nearer, unstayed by the sheriff, unchecked by the judge. She spread her poor hands in supplication; the tears coursed down her brown old cheeks. "Oh, my son, my son--my little son!" she said. He saw her dimly now, for tears answered her tears. All was silent in that room, the silence of the forest before the hurricane grasps it and bends it, and the lightnings reave its limbs.