And she left the room. * * * * * Side by side on the sofa, Blanche's fair head pillowed upon his breast, his arm thrown round her. She had taken off her bonnet and mantle, and was crying quietly. "Be calm, my dear sister. It is all for the best." "Tom, Tom, how came you to do it?" "I didn't do it, my dear one. That's where they were mistaken. I should be no more capable of doing such a thing than you are." "Then why did they condemn you--and say you were guilty?" "They knew no better. The guilty man escaped, and I suffered." "But why did you not tell the truth? Why did you not accuse him to the judge?" "I told the judge I was innocent; but that is what most prisoners say, and it made no impression on him," replied Tom. "For the rest, I did not understand the affair as well as I did after the trial. All had been so hurried; there was no time for anything. Yes, Blanche, you may at least take this solitary bit of consolation to your heart--that I was not guilty." "And that other man, who was?" she asked eagerly, lifting her face. "Where is he?" "Flourishing," said Tom. "Driving about the world four-in-hand, no doubt, and taking someone else in as he took me." Blanche turned to me, looking haughty enough. "Charles, cannot anything be done to expose the man?" she cried. Tom spoke again before I could answer. "It will not matter to me then, one way or the other. But, Charley, I do sometimes wish, as I lie thinking, that the truth might be made known and my memory cleared. I was reckless and foolish enough, heaven knows, but I never did that for which I was tried and sentenced." Now, since we had been convinced of Tom Heriot's innocence, the question whether it would be possible to clear him before the world had often been in my mind. Lake and I had discussed it more than once. It would be difficult, no doubt, but it was just possible that time might place some advantage in our hands and open up a way to us. I mentioned this now. "Ay, difficult enough, I dare say," commented Tom. "With a hundred barriers in the way--eh, Charley?" "The chief difficulty would lie, I believe, in the fact you acknowledged just now, Tom--your own folly. People argue--they argued at the time--that a young man so reckless as you were would not stick at a trifle." "Just so," replied Tom with equanimity. "I ought to have pulled up before, and--I did not. Well; you know my innocence, and now Blanche knows it, and Level knows it, and old Carlen knows it; you are about all that are near to me; and the public must be left to chance. There's one good man, though, I should like to know it, Charles, and that's Serjeant Stillingfar." "He knows it already, Tom. Be at ease on that score." "Does _he_ think, I wonder, that my memory might ever be cleared?"