Miss Beekman shrugged her shoulders.

“Nothing you have said seems to me to alter the situation.”

“Very well,” he replied.  “I guess that settles it.  Knowing you and the Beekman breed!  There’s one thing I must say,” he added as he stood in the doorway after bidding her good night—­“that old fellow Tutt has behaved pretty well, leaving you entirely alone this way.  I always had an idea he was a sort of shyster.  Most attorneys of that class would have been sitting on your doorstep all the evening trying to persuade you to stick to your resolution not to give their client away, and to do the square thing.  But he’s done nothing of the sort.  Rather decent on the whole!”

“Perhaps he recognizes a woman of honor when he sees one!” she retorted.

“Honor!” he muttered as he closed the door.  “What crimes are sometimes committed in thy name!”

But on the steps he stopped and looked back affectionately at the library window.

“After all, Althea’s a good sport!” he remarked to himself.

* * * * *

At or about the same moment a quite dissimilar conference was being held between Judge Babson and Assistant District Attorney O’Brien in the cafe of the Passamaquoddy Club.

“She’ll cave!” declared O’Brien, draining his glass.  “Holy Mike!  No woman like her is going to stay in jail!  Besides, if you don’t commit her everybody will say that you were scared to—­yielded to influence.  You’re in the right and it will be a big card for you to show that you aren’t afraid of anybody!”

Babson pulled nervously on his cigar.

“Maybe that’s so,” he said, “but I don’t much fancy an appellate court sustaining me on the law and at the same time roasting hell out of me as a man!”

“Oh, they won’t do that!” protested O’Brien.  “How could they?  All they’re interested in is the law!”

“I’ve known those fellows to do queer things sometimes,” answered the learned judge.  “And the Beekmans are pretty powerful people.”

“Well, so are the McGurks!” warned O’Brien.

* * * * *

“Now, Miss Beekman,” said Judge Babson most genially the next morning, after that lady had taken her seat in the witness chair and the jury had answered to their names, “I hope you feel differently to-day about giving your testimony.  Don’t you think that after all it would be more fitting if you answered the question?”

Miss Althea firmly compressed her lips.

“At least let me read you some of the law on the subject,” continued His Honor patiently.  “Originally many people, like yourself, had the mistaken idea that what they called their honor should be allowed to intervene between them and their duty.  And even the courts sometimes so held.  But that was long ago—­in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  To-day the law wisely recognizes no such thing.  Let me read you what Baron Hotham said, in Hill’s Trial in 1777, respecting the testimony of a witness who very properly told the court what the accused had said to him.  It is very clearly put: