Of course, this exhortation was to put her at her ease. The girl recognized this, and while she hardly heard the words of the man standing there, she thanked him mentally. As Sard met Shipman's eyes she tried to look as if she, at least, had completely forgotten the Minga incident. Anyway, Sard had seen things like that happen to Minga before. Only, in all those two years at college, reflected the girl, Minga had never been so completely, so lamentably driven from her accustomed aplomb. The thing did not make Sard like the great man any too well, but the memory of the figure of poor Dora at her work, the sense of a boy of Dunce's age going to prison "for life," these things spurred her on to what she had to say. "Perhaps we ought to apologize for coming up here like this," began the girl tentatively, "but," she laughed a little, "I don't think we will." "I cannot imagine your having ever to apologize." Watts' eyes were upon her, the expression in them very different from that with which he had subdued Minga. He looked a sort of wondering admiration, as a man may at the young face and figure so exquisitely balanced in so complete a dignity. To Watts' keen knowledge of human personality, Sard spelled clarity, essential purity; but it was not ignorant purity nor insulated clarity. It was the healthy nerve and sparkle of an original daring nature, something direct and vigorous that went straight to its interests and issues in a direct, fresh way, that looked things in the face and tackled them in front. "We,"--Sard looked around at her rather ineffectual supporters,--"we believe that you can help us about something--someone--Terence O'Brien," the girl blurted it out to the famous lawyer with a little catch of the breath. Her voice, naturally liquid, was a little husky, but she held herself admirably. "The man who is held for murder?" the lawyer's voice was grave. "The boy,"--with ever so slight an insistence on "the boy,"--"who killed that old cobbler." Sard glanced eagerly into Watts' face. "We have been talking about it, all of us, a great deal; all Willow Roads is excited over it because he is so young." The girl hesitated a moment, then she said simply, "I haven't been able to discuss it with my father but----" Sard paused; something she had not reckoned with of embarrassment seemed to thicken her throat, but she plunged bravely on. "Life sentence is what everyone thinks he will get, life sentence." Her hand went out with a curious despairing little gesture that Watts noted with concern. She turned on him dark eyes, womanly, tragic. "Life! Have we--has anyone the right to take from anyone so young the chance to try again?"