"Mr. Plausaby, let us walk," said Lurton, not affecting in the least to ignore Plausaby's agitation. They walked in silence through the village out to the prairie. Plausaby, habitually a sham, tried, to recover his ground. He said something about his wife's not being quite sane, and was going to caution Lurton about believing anything Mrs. Plausaby might say. "Mr. Plausaby," said Lurton, "is it not better to repent of your sins and make restitution, than to hide them?" Plausaby cleared his throat and wiped the perspiration from his brow, but he could not trust his voice to say anything. It was vain to appeal to Plausaby to repent. He had saturated himself in falsehood from the beginning. Perhaps, after all, the saturation had began several generations back, and unhappy Plausaby, born to an inheritance of falsehood, was to be pitied as well as blamed. He was even now planning to extort from his vacillating wife a written statement that should contradict any confession of hers to Isa and Lurton. Fly swiftly, pen! For Isa Marlay knew the stake in this game, and she did not mean that any chance of securing Charlton's release should be neglected. She knew nothing of legal forms, but she could write a straight-out statement after a woman's fashion. So she wrote a paper which read as follows: "I do not expect to live long, and I solemnly confess that I took the land-warrant from Smith Westcott's letter, for which my son Albert Charlton is now unjustly imprisoned in the penitentiary, and I did it without the knowledge of Albert, and at the instigation of Thomas Plausaby, my husband." This paper Isa read to Mrs. Plausaby, and that lady, after much vacillation, signed it with a feeble hand. Then Isabel wrote her own name as a witness. But she wanted another witness. At this moment Mrs. Ferret came in, having an instinctive feeling that a second visit from Lurton boded something worth finding out. Isa took her into Mrs. Plausaby's room and told her to witness this paper. "Well," said pertinacious Mrs. Ferret, "I'll have to know what is in it, won't I?" "No, you only want to know that this is Mrs. Plausaby's signature," and Isa placed her fingers over the paper in such a way that Mrs. Ferret could not read it. "Did you sign this, Mrs. Plausaby?" The sick woman said she did. "Do you know what is in it?" "Yes, but--but it's a secret." "Did you sign it of your own free will, or did Mr. Plausaby make you?" "Mr. Plausaby! Oh! don't tell him about it. He'll make such an awful fuss! But it's true." Thus satisfied that it was not a case of domestic despotism, Mrs. Ferret wrote her peculiar signature, and made a private mark besides.