Ned winced anew at the sharp cry, and Bob Platt looked significantly at his wife. "_Try_ him!" the look said openly. "_You_ can get something out of him!" But it was needless for Ned to brace himself for resistance. Mrs. Platt would not interfere. Her kindness to him was not diminished even after she had been to see his mother for the first time and had experienced a cold reception. She had heard from Ned in the early days of her acquaintance with the boy that his mother held aloof from strangers, and she had approved of this trait in the simple country woman transplanted to a new sphere, and said that she thought the better of Mrs. Macdonald for it. Perhaps she did not expect this reserve in her turn, when she went to urge the brightest view, and counsel hope and cheerfulness, and adduce reasons to believe that all the disaster would be finally explained and smoothed away. She thought, however, that the attitude of Ned's mother was not unnatural, and that her experience was not calculated to foster much confidence in city people and city ways. Despite Mrs. Platt's caution and resolve to report, as it were, naught of the details of her visit, Bob Platt contrived to ascertain from his wife the fact that Ned's mother knew no more than they did of the whole strange affair, that Ned had kept his own counsel, and that she had evidently never before heard the names of the two men who had given bail for his appearance at the next term of the Criminal Court, and thus released him from jail. All this served to increase the strength of the foreman's suspicions. Ned grew conscious of this accession of wonder and doubt that began to envelop him like a veritable atmosphere. So strong were these suspicions that they began to take on the quality of a grim certainty and definite menace. He was aware that they concerned others even more than himself, but who and how he could not for his life divine. He often went over in his mind the details of all the conversations he had heard; he recapitulated the impressions made upon him by gestures, significant glances, all the indicia of unexpressed sentiment, and strove to deduce the meaning of it all and its effect on the future. But these speculations at last availed naught, and as the time for his trial approached the recollection was displaced by his anxiety on his own account, and the deep despondency which the sight of his mother's distress induced in him.