He left Leigh in a passion of sorrow and self-accusation, and went home to spend a sleepless night. Toward morning, from sheer exhaustion, he dozed off into troubled dreams. He thought he had been cast into a fiery furnace along with Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego; he could see three shadowy figures moving like giants through fields of flame. Presently an angel touched him on the shoulder and called to him--in French. The angel had the face of Fanchon. He awoke with a groan and found his mother standing at the foot of his bed. She had recovered sufficiently to move about the house now in a striped calico wrapper that made her look twenty years older. “It’s the day of the trial, Willie,” she said brokenly. “Papa and Dan went an hour ago. Are--are you going to testify? Dan said he wouldn’t call you.” “The State will,” replied William apathetically, getting out of bed. His mother looked at him anxiously. “I’m afraid they’re going to call Fanchon,” she faltered. He started. For some reason he had never thought of this, and he felt a pang of horrid dismay. It couldn’t be that Judge Jessup and Dan meant to do that. But the State? William experienced a new and rending sensation. He felt like a helpless beetle pinned to the board of a naturalist; he couldn’t escape public dissection. “Perhaps you’d better not go, Willie,” suggested his mother fondly. “Emily and I are going to stay here at the telephone to-day. Papa promised to ’phone us everything, and we shall be terribly nervous and frightened. Stay with us, dear.” William realized that he was still a boy to her, and that now, when his unacceptable wife had left him, he was nearer than ever. Nevertheless, he began to look for his clothes. “I shall go straight there, of course,” he said sharply. “Please tell Miranda I want only a cup of hot coffee.” “Oh, Willie, you must eat something!” she cried tearfully. “You’ll ruin your health--there are corn muffins, too.” He had always had a weakness for corn muffins, and, acting on the advice of Miranda, his mother had ordered them to console him. But William would have none of them. He was dressing rapidly, in a fever of impatience, when Emily arrived outside his door and put her lips close to the key-hole to shout to him: “Papa says you needn’t hurry down there. He doesn’t think they’ll get a jury until next week. Dan’s used up one panel already.” William had not thought of this, and he slackened his efforts a little only to hear his sister’s return. “Mama says stay and have some muffins. They’re lovely and brown--I ate five.” The fact that murder in the second degree did not carry the death sentence had reassured Emily’s hitherto impaired appetite. Like Miranda, she ate to keep up her spirits.