Jason stood straight in the doorway. His eyes were travelling from the face of one man to another, but they avoided Mahala. Slowly his form tensed, his breathing began to come in short gasps. Albert Rich turned to him. “Jason,” he said, “get an axe. I’m going to break through the wall on the right-hand side of the front door and search the place where Becky says she put that pocket book.” Slowly Jason shook his head. His lips were very stiff, but he managed to speak. “There’s no use,” he said. “You’ll find nothing there. I mended that lath and plastered that broken place with my own hands.” Suddenly Mahala’s head fell forward, and then she lifted it, and as people have done since the beginning of the world in the ultimate agony, she called on God. Her voice was torn and pitiful past endurance. She was calling on God, but she was reaching to Jason, stretching out her hands to him. “Oh, God!” she cried. “Help me! Won’t you please help me? Why couldn’t it have been there? Why couldn’t vindication have been complete? Oh, God, won’t you help me?” Big tears rolled down her cheeks. She cried directly to Jason: “Oh, Jason! think! Think hard! Can’t you think of any place that it might be?” She appealed to Doctor Grayson: “You’re sure Becky says she brought it _here_?” “Yes,” said Doctor Grayson, “she says you gave her food here, you told her that this was the only home you had, that this was your house.” Mahala slowly nodded her head. “I did,” she said. “I told her that this was the only home I had left.” Again she turned to Jason. “Oh, Jason!” she cried. “Do this much more for me! Find it! Oh, find that pocket book!” Jason’s face was that of a man in fierce physical torture. With one hand he was tearing at the neck of his shirt, trying to pull it open. Suddenly the attention of the entire party centred on him; it became patent to every one that he was on the rack. For a long second he hesitated, staring with wide eyes of anguish at Mahala, then slowly he ran a hand into his pocket. He drew from it a heavy pruning knife. He stepped across the room and lifted from its fastening above the fireplace the oil portrait of Elizabeth Spellman. Setting it to one side, he ran his fingers over the papered wall behind it, feeling for something. When he found it, he inserted the knife, and ran it around a small space that had been papered over. Prying off a light wooden cover, he stepped back. In the opening where a couple of bricks had been removed, lay a long, black bill book. For one instant a wild light of rejoicing leaped into Mahala’s eyes, and then a sick horror overwhelmed her as she looked at Jason. She opened her lips, but no words came. Suddenly she stepped back; both her hands clutched her heart tightly. Unable to endure her gaze further, Jason made a gesture toward the opening. His head fell forward on his breast, and, turning, he staggered from the room.