Craig stared--a look of negation that made Harry's heart leap. It was a look also that held no recognition, and in that instant, for the first time since that night's harrowing series of events had begun, Harry remembered that he stood in strange guise, in unaccustomed clothes and with smooth-shaven chin. But into the eyes that gazed from the pillow recognition speedily came--recognition strangely commingled of incredulity, amaze, distempered suspicion, leaping swiftly to a slow, deadly certainty. A lurid sequence was running across the fevered mind that the man confronting him could not read: Harry Sevier sculking there and disguised--one of the burglars! The missing letters--Echo had gone with them! It had been a cunning, hypocritical plot, then, with a hired safe-robber and thug--and they had tricked and baffled him. Craig gasped. His eyes suffused with blood. He had said that he had not known the woman. Yet he could still score! Living or dying, he could drag down Harry Sevier to a black depth from which he should never rise again! He laughed, a harsh jarring laugh. His face became convulsed. He tried to lift himself on an elbow. The nurse thrust her strong arms beneath the pillow and raised him. He pointed his finger at Harry. "Yes!" he said in a crackling whisper. "He is the man who--did it! He--shot me!" "Do you know him?" The officer spoke clearly, leaning forward. "Yes. I--he is--" But that was all. With a final vain effort, his head fell back on the pillow. That last flare of rage, of revengeful hatred, had exhausted the sick vitality, and he was gone into unconsciousness. CHAPTER XXII HARRY DECIDES The steel handcuff bit more hardly into Harry's wrist, but he did not feel it. His eyes were fixed and his face had grown grey. The accusation, with all its shuddering implications, had surged over him like the assurance of the unescapable end, the last engulfing wave of hopeless finality which, in its subsidence, left him cold and still. Malice and hatred had closed the door of hope. His sacrifice had gone for nothing. He could not save Echo. The matter had been taken from his hands. She must be involved. If murder had been done, her passionate denial in his defence would no doubt suffice to save him--he knew his southern juries!--but at what a price to her would be his salvation! For though sufficient doubt would be insinuated to legally acquit him, in the eyes of their world harrowing suspicions must always cling to her. Collusion between her and himself, her lover, to secure compromising letters, a guilty understanding embracing possible murder! A midnight _rendezvous_ with one lover, converted into swift tragedy by the vengeful pursuit of the other! So the speculations would run, and the baleful whispers would follow her all her life. What matter though she married him? Would love make up for that?