"I can't imagine you advocating anything absolutely right! If I tell, I'll make a clean breast of it; if I don't I'll lie with my last breath!" He was thinking of Joe Montgomery now, as he had thought of him many times since he drew himself up out of that merciless yellow flood into which the handy-man had flung him.

Evelyn looked at him wonderingly.

His virtues, as well as his vices, were things beyond her comprehension.
The door opened, and Moxlow came into the room.

At sight of him, Langham's dull eyes grew brilliant.
"I thought you would never get here!" he said.
"This _is_ too bad, Marsh!" said his law partner sympathizingly, as Evelyn yielded him her place and withdrew to the window again.
"Where's Taylor ?" asked Langham abruptly.
"He's had to go to the jail, he was leaving the house as I got here," replied Moxlow.
There was the noise of voices in the hail, one of which was the colonel's, evidently raised in protest, then a clumsy hand was heard fumbling with the knob and the door was thrown open, and Joe Montgomery slouched into the room.
"Boss, you got to see me now!" he cried.
The prosecuting attorney sprang to his feet with an angry exclamation.
"Let him alone--" said Langham weakly.
Montgomery stole to the foot of the bed and stared down on Langham.
"You tell him, boss," nodding his head toward Moxlow.

"I put it up to you!" he said.
Langham's glance dwelt for an instant on the handy-man, then it shifted back to Moxlow.
"Stop the execution!" he said, and Moxlow thought his mind wandered.
"North didn't kill McBride," Langham went on.