Jinnie got up, putting the limp boy in her chair. She was making a masterful effort to be brave, to restrain the rush of emotion demanding utterance. Some beating thing in her side ached as if it were about to burst. But she stood still until Peg spoke again. "It's all bad business, Jinnie! an' I can't see no help comin' from anywhere." If Peg's head hadn't fallen suddenly into her hands, perhaps Jinnie wouldn't have collapsed just then. As it was, her knees gave way, and she fell forward beside the cobbler's wife. Bobbie, in his helpless way, knelt too. Since Lafe's arrest the girl had not prayed, nor could she recall the promises Lafe had taught her were made for the troubled in spirit. Could she now say anything to make Peg's suffering less, even if she did not believe it all herself? "Peg," she pleaded, "don't shiver so!... Hold up your head.... I want to tell you something." Peggy made a negative gesture. "It ain't to be bore, Jinnie," she moaned hoarsely. "Lafe ain't no chance. They'll put him in the chair." Such awful words! The import was pressed deeper into two young hearts by Peg's wild weeping. Jinnie staggered to her feet. Blind Bobbie broke into a prolonged wail. "Lafe ain't never done nothin' bad in all his life," went on the woman, from the shelter of her hands. "He's the best man in the world. He's worked an' worked for everybody, an' most times never got no pay. An' now----" "Don't say it again, Peggy!" Jinnie's voice rang out. "Don't think such things. They couldn't put Lafe in a wicked death chair--they _couldn't_." Bobbie's upraised eyes were trying to pierce through their veil of darkness to seek the speaker's meaning. "What chair, Jinnie?" he quivered. "What kind of a chair're they goin' to put my beautiful Lafe in?" Jinnie's mind went back to the teachings of the cobbler, and the slow, sweet, painful smile intermingled with her agony. Again and again the memory of the words, "He hath given his angels charge over thee," swelled her heart to the breaking point. She wanted to believe, to feel again that ecstatic faith which had suffused her as Maudlin Bates pulled her curls in the marsh, when she had called unto the Infinite and Theodore had answered. Peg needed Lafe's angels at that moment. They all needed the comfort of the cobbler's faith. "Peg," she began, "your man'd tell you something sweet if he could see you now." Peg ceased writhing, but didn't lift her face. Jinnie knew she was listening, and continued: "Haven't you heard him many a time, when there wasn't any wood in the house or any bread to eat, tell you about--about----" Down dropped the woman's hands, and she lifted a woebegone face to her young questioner. "Yes, I've heard him, Jinnie," she quavered, "but I ain't never believed it!"