Then presently she began unfastening her hood and cloak.

"If you can keep me till morning I shall be obliged," she said, with a kind of stern gratitude.
"Stay just as well as not!" cried Mrs.Otis.

"Jim, just take her things and lay 'em in the bedroom.

Then you have her set right down close to the hearth, and get all warmed through, while I get supper." Handsome young Jim Otis stood by with his brows knit moodily while Madelon Hautville removed her wraps, then took them over his arm, and conducted her to the warm seat in the hearth-corner which his mother designated.
In his heart he judged this girl whom he was defending to be guilty, yet was full of intensest admiration, and was sorely torn between the two and his own remorse over his false witnessing.

"If I'm called into court and sworn on the Bible, I won't own up that I saw her take that knife," he muttered to himself, as he laid the red cloak and hood on the high feather-bed in his mother's room.
This handsome, stalwart young man, who had hitherto been considered full of a gay audacity where womenfolk were concerned, able to make almost any pretty girl flutter at his smile, was strangely abashed before this beautiful Madelon Hautville, stained, in his eyes, with crime.