She began dimly to see that, at worst, Jack’s act was not the calculated murder her father held it to be.  In her own tortured mind there had been at first but one clear process of reasoning.  That process, whenever she began to gather the shreds, had led her mind straight to the conviction that Jack’s shot had been premeditated, that the chance had been prearranged with the enemies of her brother.  At first her only distinct thought was that the hapless Wesley had been lured to his death.  The hand of the man she loved had sent the fatal shot into the poor boy’s body.  Had it been in self-defense—­even in the heat of uncontrollable anger—­she could have found mitigation for Jack; but there was neither the justification of self-defense nor the plausible pretext of anger.  One word of warning, which Jack could have spoken, would have saved Wesley from the rash, the dastardly attempt upon the Rosedale household.  The plot, in all its details, must have been known to Jack or Dick, else how explain their presence in the chamber, armed and ready for the murder?

It had been a conspiracy of delusive kindness from the day Wesley entered Rosedale.  The frankness and kindliness of the Atterburys had been assumed to lure him to his fatal adventure.  Boone himself believed that Jack’s ignoble ambition and envy had been the main motives in the murder.  To this Kate, from the first, opposed a resolute incredulity.

“You don’t know the fellow, I tell you,” Boone doggedly argued.  “He’s as like his father as two snakes in a hole.  Old man Sprague never let a man stand in his way.  Jack’s the same.  He thought Wes’ kept him from the shoulder-straps, and he got him out of the way.  Wasn’t he always snooping ’round in the regiment trying to undermine your brother?  Wasn’t he always trying to be popular?  Ah, I know the Spragues.  But I’ll give them a wrench that’ll twist their damned pride out of them.  I’ll have that cold-blooded young villain shot in a hollow square, and I’ll have it done in this very district, that the whole county may know the disgrace of the high and mighty Spragues.”

“No, father.”  Kate had heard all this before, but she, for the first time, resolved upon setting her father right.  “No, Jack hasn’t a particle of the feeling you ascribe to him.  I don’t think he liked poor Wesley.  They were totally unlike in nature, and I think that Jack felt deeply that he had been wronged by Wesley’s appointment.  But it was not in his nature to seek revenge.  He would have fought Wesley openly, but he would never be one of a gang of murderers.  I think I can see how Jack was led into the part he played.  It does not lessen the guilt, but it relieves him of the odious suspicions I first felt.”

Then Boone, in irritable impatience, reminded her of her own earlier utterances; how from his first coming Wesley had been treated with studied distrust; how he had been denied the boyish intimacy that existed between Jack and Dick; how he was insensibly made to feel that he was in the house under a different cartel from that of Jack and Dick; that he was a prisoner on parole, and his word was doubted.  Nothing could make him believe, he declared, getting up moodily, but that the whole lot of them had set out to drive Wesley into a corner and then kill him, as they had done.