“But I can’t see how there can be any mistake,” exclaimed the doctor.  “At Jacob’s trial everything was so clear, his guilt was so fixed, that there seemed no chance for a mistake.  Mrs. Trent, it looked to me, prejudiced in favor of your husband as I was, that there could be no doubt that Jacob gave old Mr. Withey the arsenic and that Mrs. Withey was his equally guilty accomplice.  I think this second trial must only be a repetition of the first, and that Mrs. Withey must be found the murderess of Andrew Withey, just as Jacob Trent was proven murderer.”

Mrs. Trent leaned forward in her chair.  Her hands were clenched and every muscle in her frail body was drawn tense.  The look in her eyes startled the good doctor, and, thinking that he had recalled too harshly the ugliness of her husband’s crime, hastened to make amends.

“Mrs. Trent,” he said, “I am sorry that I spoke so.  It was cruel of me.”

“No, no,” the woman answered thickly, “I am used to that, it doesn’t shock me to hear so much about Jacob now.  But tell me, doctor, tell me, are you sure she will not get off?  Will they treat her as they did Jacob?”

“What, Mrs. Trent, you surely wouldn’t wish trouble to any fellow creature if it could be avoided, would you?”

“Doctor McMurray,” replied Mrs. Trent in a very low voice which seemed to come from her inmost soul, “Doctor McMurray, that woman robbed me of my husband, of Jacob, and then led him to a murderer’s grave.  That is so.  Do you know, now that so many weeks have gone by since they took Jacob away, sometimes I feel that he is true to me somewhere, and that she, that woman, was the one who led him on to do wrong.  You ask me if I would see any fellow creature suffer.  I answer no; but I say too that that woman has no claim to be fellow creature to any human being.  She robbed me of my husband.”

For a time the two sat in silence.  The rain continued to drip, drip from the eaves, and the Cleft was still clogged with mist.  Then the old doctor broke the silence.

“I am afraid we do wrong, Mrs. Trent, in brooding over these troubles of ours.  Heaven knows you have provocation.  There seems to be no doubt but that your husband gave arsenic to old Mr. Withey, and it seems the more grievous when we think that the natural ailments of the old man must soon have hurried him across the Great River in any case.  It is also true that he did it for the love of a woman whose youth and beauty he conceived to have won him heart and soul.  But, Mrs. Trent, it is also a fact that we are here to live above these things, hard as they may seem, and to forgive those who do us ill.”

Mrs. Trent rose from her chair and stepped toward the window which looked out toward the Peak.  Her hands, which she had folded behind her back, worked convulsively.

“The Peak,” she said at last.  “The Peak is covered with clouds; I cannot see.  Forgive—­forgive her?  All is cloudy, I cannot see.”