The flare of the match fell. "Well, good night to you," said the deputy-sheriff. "Hold on," said Harry. "Can a prisoner use money?" "They're not supposed to, but I reckon money talks as loud in a concrete cell as anywhere else." Sevier had taken some crisp yellow-backs from his pocket and now he held them out--to the jailbird. "Here!" he said. "Take this." The other looked at the bills with a suddenly contorted face, then with a whirl of his unfettered hand dashed them on the ground. "Keep your money!" he snarled. "I'm a thief--that's what _I_ am now! When I want money I'll steal it!" The sheriff made an exclamation, and jerked viciously on the tethered wrist. "Don't you mind, sir," he said. "You mean it well, but this is an ugly one. Lord love you, they'll soon take that out of him over there! Come along, you," he added to the other, pulling him toward the Black Maria, "and if you open your face like that I'll give you what for!" Sevier stood an instant looking dully after them, then mechanically picked up the fallen bills, fumblingly replaced them in his pocket, and climbed into the motor. He felt his face suddenly hot. In those flung words his judicial mind recognised the indictment. From the little wall-cabinet in his inner-office had crept a thing of shame and humiliation to himself. He saw this now suddenly swell and grow--as did the vapour from the fisherman's cruse--to a blighting, tentacled thing, reaching interminably into the future, holding in its coils a human life of pain, of desperate warfare, of social outlawry. He sat down on the leather cushions like one in a dream. "Home now, Bob," he said, heavily. CHAPTER IV THE PRODIGAL At Midfields that evening the late moonlight poured a flood of radiance on the wide columned porch with its climbing roses where Echo sat on the step, chin in hand, absorbed in her own thought. She was alone. Nancy had slipped off to bed, her mother had retired to her room and her father to the quiet of the library and his reading. From the kitchens she could hear the muffled clash of table-silver and the strident voice of Aunt Emily the cook, grumbling at Nelson: "Yo'-all hurry erlong wid dem ar fawks, now! Speck ah's gwine wait heah all _night_, yo' triflin' trash, yo'? Yo' heah me--yo' ain' blind! What yo' 'spose Marse Bev'ly _pay_ yo' fo', anyhow?" From far down the road, beyond the gates, she could hear the faint twang of a guitar and the refrain of strolling, darky voices: "Reign! Reign! Reign-a mah Lawd! Reign, Marse Jesus, reign! Reign salvation in-a mah soul, Reign, Marse Jesus, reign!"