“Mr. Ladley’s gone, if you want him,” I said.  I thought his face cleared.

“Gone!” he said.  “Where?”

“To jail.”

He did not reply at once.  He stood there, tapping the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other.  He was dirty and unshaven.  His clothes looked as if he had been sleeping in them.

“So they’ve got him!” he muttered finally, and turning, was about to go out the front door without another word, but I caught his arm.

“You’re sick, Mr. Howell,” I said.  “You’d better not go out just yet.”

“Oh, I’m all right.”  He took his handkerchief out and wiped his face.  I saw that his hands were shaking.

“Come back and have a cup of tea, and a slice of home-made bread.”

He hesitated and looked at his watch.  “I’ll do it, Mrs. Pitman,” he said.  “I suppose I’d better throw a little fuel into this engine of mine.  It’s been going hard for several days.”

He ate like a wolf.  I cut half a loaf into slices for him, and he drank the rest of the tea.  Mr. Reynolds creaked up to bed and left him still eating, and me still cutting and spreading.  Now that I had a chance to see him, I was shocked.  The rims of his eyes were red, his collar was black, and his hair hung over his forehead.  But when he finally sat back and looked at me, his color was better.

“So they’ve canned him!” he said.

“Time enough, too,” said I.

He leaned forward and put both his elbows on the table.  “Mrs. Pitman,” he said earnestly, “I don’t like him any more than you do.  But he never killed that woman.”

“Somebody killed her.”

“How do you know?  How do you know she is dead?”

Well, I didn’t, of course—­I only felt it.

“The police haven’t even proved a crime.  They can’t hold a man for a supposititious murder.”

“Perhaps they can’t but they’re doing it,” I retorted.  “If the woman’s alive, she won’t let him hang.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” he said heavily, and got up.  He looked in the little mirror over the sideboard, and brushed back his hair.  “I look bad enough,” he said, “but I feel worse.  Well, you’ve saved my life, Mrs. Pitman.  Thank you.”

“How is my—­how is Miss Harvey?” I asked, as we started out.  He turned and smiled at me in his boyish way.

“The best ever!” he said.  “I haven’t seen her for days, and it seems like centuries.  She—­she is the only girl in the world for me, Mrs. Pitman, although I—­” He stopped and drew a long breath.  “She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Very beautiful,” I answered.  “Her mother was always—­”

“Her mother!” He looked at me curiously.

“I knew her mother years ago,” I said, putting the best face on my mistake that I could.

“Then I’ll remember you to her, if she ever allows me to see her again.  Just now I’m persona non grata.”

“If you’ll do the kindly thing, Mr. Howell,” I said, “you’ll forget me to her.”