The lawyer instinctively admired the girl for her directness, and he met her with equal directness. "No," he said, "we haven't, no one has, under any circumstances, the right to take life but in such cases we choose a lesser evil instead of a perfect good. Here the problem is that this boy, for a small amount of money, wantonly killed an old man, who had befriended him, trusted him; 'murder,'" said Watts emphatically, "is on his soul--do you think he would have strength to live again?" It was stated very simply, but with such unadorned clearness that Sard shivered. Shipman, without speaking, got up and went into the house, presently emerging with some light steamer rugs and Italian blankets, one of which he drew around Sard's shoulders. He motioned in a big brotherly way to the somewhat subdued girls of the party, "I'm afraid you're all cold. Shall we go in? Haven't you sweaters or something?" But something stiff in this little party made them refuse to enter the house; it might almost have been that this strange man who lived in the organ builder's house had so impressed them by a sense of inherent personal power that they felt actually safer outdoors. Anyway, Minga, the little scarlet leader of all their pranks and escapades, their rather elaborately planned defiances and simulated viciousness, had been shamed by this man. Sard, it seemed, also remembered it; however, she did not refuse the Italian blanket, though she let it slip to her knees. The lawyer noted this, and the corners of his mouth moved slightly. He turned to the younger practitioner of his profession. "It is an ugly case," he remarked gravely. "The way it was done," he made a gesture of disgust, "the boy must have something essentially sneaky and cold in him. There are natures like that," he turned to Sard, "natures that you could hardly, with all your imagination, realize or comprehend." So the group sat in the moonlight discussing the thing. One by one the lawyer drew the young philanthropists out. Under the rather marked paucity of expression he found the same impulse, the broad human wish to give this boy, caught like a fly in the net of the law, "another chance." Watts quietly relaxed, sat there in the moonlight, studying the sober young faces. Finally he spoke the thing that had first of all come into his mind. "Perhaps I ought not to ask this," turning to Sard, "but your father, in this county, is the Law and Prophets. The country people dote on his judgments; they trust him; somehow I should think no lawyer would influence his decision, no jury's verdict interfere with his sentence. He, I should think in talking with you, would be able to make you feel the essential inevitability of the thing."