The matter was easily arranged. The Judge, full of compassion for the ruined youth, and in spite of reason, testimony, and everything else, still not believing in Boyd Westover's guilt, asked if ten days would suffice. Then without renewing the bail bonds that had expired with the beginning of the trial, he appointed the tenth day thereafter for sentence. It was the Commonwealth's Attorney's business to move for the renewal of the bonds, without which the condemned man was in fact under no restraint whatever, but he made no motion of the kind. When asked by Jack Towns some time afterwards why he had not done his duty in that respect, he replied: "I simply couldn't. Boyd Westover and I were schoolmates, you know, and I lived for many months in his father's house. I _knew_ he wouldn't run away. Who ever heard of a Westover flinching? Why should I subject him to an indignity?" Thus, in Virginia, did character--personal and inherited--count. There were some things that a gentleman could not do. He might commit a crime of violence, but he could not do a cowardly or treacherous act. The bailiff who had trusted Boyd Westover's word of honor, knew that and risked the loss of his place upon his confidence in it. The Commonwealth's Attorney knew it and took the chance of impeachment upon it. The net result was that on the day of his conviction Boyd Westover walked out of court an absolutely free man except in so far as he was bound by his own sense of honor and by the traditions of the race from which he was sprung. These bound him to appear in court for sentence at the end of the ten days allowed to him, and as everybody knew, the bond was amply sufficient. Jack Towns took him in the meanwhile to his own house. "You'll be my guest," he said, "and I'll see that we aren't interrupted." "You still don't mind that?" Boyd asked. For response he got an earnest look in the eyes, and the verbal answer: "Don't be a fool, Boyd." After a minute, Boyd asked, reflectively: "How is it, Jack, that you and some others seem still to believe in me? In view of the evidence--" "Hang the evidence," interrupted the lawyer. "Don't you know that character is the most important and the most trustworthy fact in life? You don't suppose for a moment that I have a doubt in your case, do you? If you do, you grievously wrong my friendship." "How then do you account for the facts as set forth in the testimony against me?" "What do you mean, Boyd? Are you trying to convince me that you are guilty of a crime that I know to be utterly impossible to you?" "No. I am only trying to find out the grounds of your confidence in me, so that I may know how far to impose on them in making my arrangements for the future. That's the purport of my question, which, by the way, you haven't answered yet."