And all that fortnight, fearful only of interruption, Julia Cavendish worked on. The leather manuscript-box was nearly full. Almost, the weapon of her mind's conceiving had been forged sharp to the point. The watchers at her bedside--even her own son--were no longer quite real. She saw them as dream-folk; queer dear people who ministered to her comforts in the hours when her brain, weary of word-fashioning, rested awhile. Those dream-folk--she knew--all except Ronnie, were growing anxious, doubtful of the part she played to them. They wanted her to send for the "medicine-man." But the "medicine-man" could not help. His part was done. Only courage could help her now--courage and the certainty of that all-pervading Presence, of the Godhead who, watching her as she ran her painful race with physical death, understood. Vaguely--when her son came to bid her au revoir--Julia Cavendish realized the Presence hovering about the familiar room. Distant church-bells told her that it was a Sunday, that Ronnie must catch the afternoon train for London within the hour. "Just looked in to see if you were all right, before I toddled off, mater," he said; and hearing his voice she yearned, with a foreknowledged longing acuter than any physical pain, to abandon the part she played for him, to tell him--for his own sake--the truth. But the Presence sustained her; so that she fought back the betraying truth; so that she answered him, gaily, casually, "I'm feeling like a two-year-old, son"; so that she sat upright in her bed--oh, for the comfort to have felt his arms about her shoulders!--and listened for twenty agonized minutes to his talk of "the case." "You must wish me luck, mater," he said, as he rose to go. "It'll be a terrific fight; but I feel, somehow, that I'm going to win." "You _will_ win," she answered. "Don't worry about me. I'll be all right. And remember--if by any chance the verdict goes against you--that no man can do more than his best." Yet after he had kissed her good-by, after the door had closed gently behind him, leaving her alone with her thoughts in the slanting sun-rays of that quiet room, even the knowledge that _she_ had done her best, even the conviction of Godhead, failed to comfort Julia Cavendish, mother. 2 The Central Criminal Court of London, though still known as the "Old" Bailey, is the modernest of modern edifices; domed stone without, polished marble within. Were it not for the uniformed police on guard at its narrow portal, and for the particular legal atmosphere which pervades it even out of session-time, you might at first glance take the place for a club-house or a bank building. From the tessellated spaciousness of its ground floor, a central staircase, broad between marble balusters, up-sweeps to an immense landing where witnesses, constables, and barristers foregather outside the various oaken doors which lead into the oak-paneled court-rooms. Below are the cells.