"That's the bunch we want, all right," proclaimed the officer of law and order as he turned back to the still open door. "Come up, boys, and take 'em down," he called cheerfully and companionably out through the darkness. Mary, at the answering tumult of those quick-thumping feet, crept a little closer to my side. Alarm, I suppose, had at last seeped through and crumbled the last of her Lockwood pride. The flash of waiting firearms, the strange faces, the still stranger experiences of that night, seemed to have brought about some final and unlooked for subjugation of her spirit. At least, so I thought. "Couldn't you take me away, Witter?" she asked a little weakly and also a little wistfully. Yet there was something about the very tone of her voice which sent a thrill through my tired body. And that thrill gave me boldness enough to reach out a proprietory arm and let the weight of her body rest against it. "You won't want us, will you, Belton?" I demanded, and that long-legged young officer stared about at us abstractedly, for a moment or two, before replying. When he turned away he did so to hide what seemed to be a slowly widening smile. "_These_ are the folks I want," he retorted, with a hand-wave toward his three prisoners. And without wasting further breath or time on them I helped Mary out and down to the Nile-green roadster. "No; let me," she said as she noticed my movement to mount to the driver's seat. But she was silent for several minutes as we threaded our way out through the quiet and shadowy streets. "Witter," she said at last and with a gulp, "you must think I'm an--an awful coward." "_I_ was the coward," I proclaimed out of my sudden misery of mind. For there were certain things which would be terribly hard to forget. "You?" she cried. "After what I've just seen? After what you've saved me from? Oh, how you must despise me!" "No," I said with a gulp of my own. "That's not the word." "It's not," she absently agreed. "It's not," I repeated, "for I love you!" She made no response to that foolish and untimely declaration. All her attention, in fact, seemed directed toward her driving. "But I was so cowardly in that other thing," she persisted, out of this second silence. "Judging without understanding, condemning something I was only too ready to do myself!" "And it made you hate me?" "No--no. I hate myself!" And her gesture was one of protest, passionate protest. "But you _must_ have hated me." "Witter," she said, speaking quite low and leaning a little closer to the wheel as she spoke, as though all her thoughts were on the shadowy road ahead of her, "I never hated you--never! I couldn't even make myself." "Why?" I asked, scarcely knowing I had spoken. "Because _I've always loved you_," she said in a whisper, big with bravery. And I heard a silvery little bell begin to ring in my heart, like a bird in an orchard, heralding spring.