Dr. May, with all Henry's patients on his hands as well as his own, had been forced to devote this entire day to his profession; but on the next, leaving Henry to watch over Averil, who continued very feeble and feverish, he went to Whitford, almost infected by Henry's forebodings and Mr. Bramshaw's misgivings. 'It is a bad case,' the attorney had said to him, confidentially. 'But that there is always a great reluctance to convict upon circumstantial evidence, I should have very little hope, that story of his is so utterly impracticable; and yet he looks so innocent and earnest all the time, and sticks to it so consistently, that I don't know what to make of it. I can't do anything with him, nor can his brother either; but perhaps you might make him understand that we could bring him clear off for manslaughter--youth, and character and all. I should not doubt of a verdict for a moment! It is awkward about the money, but the alarm would be considered in the sentence.' 'You don't attend to his account of the person he saw in the court-yard?' 'The less said about that the better,' returned Mr. Bramshaw. 'It would only go for an awkward attempt to shift off the suspicion, unless he would give any description; and that he can't, or won't do. Or even if he did, the case would be all the stronger against his story--setting off, and leaving a stranger to maraud about the place. No, Dr. May; the only thing for it is to persuade the lad to own to having struck the old man in a passion; every one knows old Axworthy could be intolerably abusive, and the boy always was passionate. Don't you remember his flying out at Mr. Rivers's, the night of the party, and that affair which was the means of his going to the mill at all? I don't mind saying so to you in confidence, because I know you won't repeat it, and I see his brother thinks so too; but nothing is likely to turn out so well for him as that line of defence; as things stand now, the present one is good for nothing.' Dr. May was almost as much grieved at the notion of the youth's persistence in denying such a crime, as at the danger in which it involved him, and felt that if he were to be brought to confession, it should be from repentance, not expediency. In this mood he drove to Whitford Gaol, made application at the gates, and was conducted up the stairs to the cell. The three days of nearly entire solitude and of awful expectation had told like double the number of years; and there was a stamp of grave earnest collectedness on the young brow, and a calm resolution of aspect and movement, free from all excitement or embarrassment, as Leonard Ward stood up with a warm grateful greeting, so full of ingenuous reliance, that every doubt vanished at the same moment.