The Devil's Garden. W. B. Maxwell

to that extent shaken and off my balance; but I beg, as no more than is due, gentlemen, that you won't take me for quite the man up here, where all's strange, to what I am down there, where I'm in my element and on my own ground. And I would further submit, under the head of all parties at Rodhaven, that there may be a bit of malice behind their report."

      "What malice could there possibly be? They appear to have shown an inclination to pass over the whole matter."

      "Only if I took a black mark, sir. That's where the shoe pinched with me, sir—and perhaps with them too. They mayn't have been best pleased when I asked to have your decision over theirs."

      Then the Colonel spoke instead of Sir John.

      "But apart from Rodhaven, we have evidence against you from the village. Your neighbors, Mr. Dale, complain more forcibly than anybody else."

      "Is that so?" Dale felt as if he had received a wickedly violent blow in the dark. "Of course," and he moved his hands spasmodically—"Of course I've long expected I'd enemies." Then he snorted. "But I suppose, sir, you're alluding now to a certain Member of Parliament whose name I needn't mention."

      "Yes, I allude to him, and to others—to several others."

      "If some have spoken against me, there's a many more would have spoken for me."

      "But they have not done so," said the Colonel dryly.

      For a moment Dale's mental distress was so acute that his ideas seemed to blend in one vast confused whirl. Some answer was imperatively necessary, and no answer could evolve itself. Hesitation would be interpreted as the sign of a guilty conscience. And in this dreadful arrest of his faculties, the sense of bodily fatigue accentuated itself till it seemed that it would absolutely crush him.

      "Gentlemen, as I was venturing to say—" Really the pause had been imperceptible: "From the vicar downwards, there's many would have spoke to my credit—if I'd asked them. And I did not ask them—and for why?"

      "Well, why?"

      "Because," said Dale, with a brave effort, "I relied implicitly on the fair play that would be meted out here. From the hour I knew I was to be heard at headquarters, I said this is now between me and headquarters, and I don't require any one—be it the highest in the land—coming between us."

      "Ah, I understand," said the Colonel, with great politeness.

      "Such was my confident feeling, sir—my full confidence that, having heard me, you'd bear me out as doing my duty, and no more nor no less than my duty."

      Yet, even as he said so, his whole brain seemed as if fumes from some horrid corrosive acid were creeping through and through it. In truth, all his confidence had gone, and only his courage remained. These men were hostile to him; they had prejudged him; their deadly politeness and their airs of suave impartiality could not conceal their abominable intentions. He had trusted them, and they were going to show themselves unworthy of trust.

      "Gentlemen," he said the word very loudly, and again there came the check to the sequence of his ideas. In another whirl of thought he remembered those courtyards at the Abbey House, the loyal service of his wife's family, the great personage who might have spoken up for him. Oh, why hadn't he allowed Mavis to write a second time imploring aid? "Gentlemen—" He echoed the word twice, and then was able to go on. "My desire has ever bin to conduct the service smooth and expeditious, and in strict accordance with the regulations—more particularly as set out in the manual, which I can truly ass-ass-assev'rate that I read more constant and careful than what I do the Bible."

      He knew that the crisis was close upon him. Now or never he must speak the words that should convince and prevail; and instinct told him that he would speak in vain. Nevertheless, he succeeded in stimulating himself adequately for the last great effort. He would fight game and he would die game.

      "If," he said stoutly, "I am at liberty now to make my plain statement of the facts, I do so. It was seven-thirty-five P.M. Miss Yorke was at the instrument. I was here"—and he moved a step away. "The soldier was there;" and he pointed. "The soldier began his audacity by—"

      "But, good gracious," said Sir John, "you are going back to the very beginning."

      "For your proper understanding," said Dale, with determination, "I must commence at the commencement. If, as promised, I am to be heard—"

      "But you have been heard."

      "Your pardon, sir. You have examined me, but I have made no statement."

      "Oh, very well." Sir John, as well as the other two, assumed an attitude of patient boredom. "Fire ahead, then, Mr. Dale."

      And, bowing, Dale plunged into his long-pondered oration. Their three faces told him that he was failing. Not a single point seemed to score. He was muddled, hopeless, but still brave. He struggled on stanchly. With a throbbing at his temples, a prickly heat on his chest, a clammy coldness in his spine—with his voice sounding harsh and querulous, or dull and faint—with the sense that all the invisible powers of evil had combined to deride, to defeat, and to destroy him—he struggled on toward the bitterly bitter end of his ordeal.

      He had nearly got there, was just reaching his man-to-man finale, when the judges cut him short.

      "One moment, Mr. Dale."

      The nice young man had come in, and was talking both to Sir John and the Colonel.

      "Thank you. Just for a moment."

      Of his own accord Dale had gone back to the window.

      It was all over. Never mind about the end of the speech. Nothing could have been gained by saying it. The tension of his nerves relaxed, and a wave of sick despair came rolling upward from viscera to brain. He knew now with absolute certainty that right was going to count for nothing; no justice existed in the world; these men were about to decide against him.

      "Yes,"—and the young man laughed genially—"he said I was to offer his apologies."

      Dale listened to the conversation at the table without attempting to understand it. Somebody, as he gathered dully, was demanding an interview. But the interruption could make no difference. It was all over.

      "He said he wouldn't take 'No' for an answer."

      Then they all laughed; and Sir John said to the young man, "Very well. Ask him in."

      The young man went out, leaving the door open; and Dale saw that the secretary had risen and brought another chair to the table. Then footsteps sounded in the corridor, and Sir John and the Colonel smilingly turned their eyes toward the open doorway. Dale, turning his eyes in the same direction, started violently.

      The newcomer was Mr. Barradine.

      He shook hands with the gentlemen at the table, who had both got up to receive him; he talked to them pleasantly and chaffingly, and there was more laughter; then he nodded to Dale; then he said he was much obliged to the secretary for giving him the chair, and then he sat down.

      Dale's thoughts were like those of a drowning sailor, when through the darkness and the storm he hears the voice of approaching aid. He had been going down in the deep, cruel waters, with the longed-for lights of home, the adored face of his wife, the dreaded gates of hell, all dancing wildly before his eyes—and now. Breath again, hope again, life again.

      He listened, but did not trouble to understand. It was dreamlike, glorious, sublime. The illustrious visitor had alluded to the fact that Jack, the nice young man, was a connection of his; and had explained that, hearing from Jack of to-day's appointment, he determined to go right down there and beard the lions in their den. He had also spoken of a nephew of Sir John's, who was coming to have a bang at the Abbey partridges in September. He further reminded the Colonel that he did not consider himself a stranger, because they used to meet often at such and such a place. He also asked if the Colonel kept up his riding. Now, without any change of tone, he was talking of the case.

      And Dale, watching, felt as if his whole heart had been melted, and as if it