He stopped, drawing a deep breath. He seemed to be contemplating something amazing. Virginia said nothing. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, looking not at him but at the constellation in front of her. It happened to be the Scorpion, and she began to count the stars silently. “By gum!” said the colonel again. Plato came to the door. “Col’nel, have a julep, suh, or dat watermelon?” “Nothing at all; I’m not hungry.” The colonel waved him away; then he turned to Virginia and told her Fanchon’s story. He told it better than she could have hoped to have him tell it. “She hasn’t been a bad girl, Jinny. That was a relief to me. Haskins tried to slur her, but Daniel brought it out point by point. Married at fifteen, and her old aunt swore that she was eighteen to get money out of it, by gum!” Virginia, who had listened with emotion, shivered. “I think it was cruel, grandfather, to make her tell it.” The old man nodded. “Not to save Leigh, though. Lordy, Jinny, I never saw Leigh look younger, except that day I caught him with the lollypop. It ought to save him.” He added reluctantly, with a fine sense of justice: “Jinny, I can’t blame William. He got up and left the court. Mr. Carter told me about it. He never knew a darned thing about his wife being a divorced woman, nor about Corwin, nor anything. She lied to him, Jinny.” The colonel leaned back and thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat. “I’m kind of sorry for him. He’s going to get a divorce, so they say; but the girl--Fanchon, I mean--she’s tried to save Leigh, and she’s about ruined herself. Jinny, I felt as if it was heroic. I--by gum, come inside, I can’t stand those crickets to-night! They’re on my nerves--shouting ‘Here again, here again!’ Jinny, I’m sorry for them all, but I’m a darned sight sorrier for the girl!” XXIV “LEIGH’S acquitted!” Judge Jessup, with a flushed face, bent over to whisper it to Mrs. Carter. In the crowd and confusion of the court-room she seemed too dazed to hear the foreman of the jury as he answered the judge’s interrogation. She looked up at the old lawyer, her lip quivering like a child. “Oh, judge! Really and truly?” He nodded, swallowing a lump in his throat, for Mrs. Carter collapsed, crying like a baby on Emily’s shoulder, and Judge Jessup found it a moving spectacle. He had once had a devoted mother himself. There was a crowd around Leigh, old friends and sympathizers, and--to Mr. Carter’s horror--newspaper reporters. It made the perspiration stand out in beads on his forehead. “Heavens, I should think we’d had enough without that,” he groaned inwardly, and then he caught sight of his eldest son’s face. William was standing behind Leigh, his arms folded and his eyes down. It seemed to his father that he had never seen such wreckage in a young man’s face before. It was as hard as flint. The square jaws were set and the brows bent. William had been drinking the cup of humiliation to the dregs.