"It don't look possible," agreed Billy. "It really don't. I never would have thought it of him. I hope he can prove himself clear of the deed." "Won't you ask Sophronia to come by to-morrow and go with me?" asked Sally, thoughtfully, "I hate to go alone." "Yes, to be sure," answered Billy, "I'll ride over to-night an' see her." On the morrow Sophronia came. Mrs. Brown at once suspected Sally's motives in going to town, and when she put the question point-blank to her daughter, Sally frankly confessed that she was going to see Milton. "Sally Brown!" cried her mother, with her hands upraised. "The idea of your standin' there, an' tellin' me you air goin' to see that miserable murderer, that's not only cheated you out of a good husband, but out of a lot o' property besides. He ought to be hung, an' you know it!" "He sent for me, and I'm going," answered Sally, simply. "Well, go!" cried her mother, wrathfully, "go! an' soon folks will be sayin' that, like as not, you also had a hand in gettin' the Squire put out of the way. It seems a hard thing to say about your own child, but I declare it begins to look like it," added Mrs. Brown, bitterly. Quick upon the words the girl's eyes flashed forth something of the indignation she felt at their cruel significance, and an angry torrent of denial rose to her lips, and yet it was suddenly stayed by an inner voice that seemed to say--"Who but you has brought it all about?" She did, indeed, have a hand in it, but not in the way her mother suggested. Sally turned away and made no answer. When she was brought face to face with the prisoner, the gloom of the place, the grated cell, the dismal air of confinement, burst upon her in startling reality, and forced on her lively imagination the full significance of her lover's peril. Milt looking pale and careworn, while in his dark eyes lingered the look of the hunted, supplanting the frank, free gaze they had worn in his careless freedom. He was a prisoner, and the sweet freedom of the hills was no longer his portion. It was some moments before the girl could trust herself to speak, and in Milt's eyes there also lingered a suspicious moisture. The jailer and Sophronia had discreetly withdrawn to the further end of the dim corridor, and were talking over Milton's case in low voices of deep concern. "Sally," said the prisoner, in an undertone that reached only her ears, "I have sent for you to put myself right in your eyes. After what happened the other night, and what I had said to you in my ungovernable jealousy, there's only one thing you could think of me in connection with this miserable affair, and I can't blame you in the least for thinking it. You, of all others, have the best right to call me a murderer, but as God in heaven is my judge, I swear to you, by the sacred memory of my dead mother, that I did not commit that crime!"