Meanwhile the Judge had ordered a carriage and taken Harold with him to his private room in the hotel, where the hardest part for Hal was yet to come.

‘Now, my boy,’ the judge said, after he had made Harold lie down upon the couch and had locked the door, ’now, tell me all about it.  How came you by the diamond?’

It was such a pitiful, pleading, agonized face which lifted itself from the cushion and looked at Judge St. Claire, as Harold began: 

’I cannot tell you now—­I must not? but by and by perhaps I can.  They were handed to me to keep by some one, just for a little while.  I cannot tell you who it was.  I think I would die sooner than do it.  Certainly I would rather go to prison, as Peterkin wishes me to.’

There was a thoughtful, perplexed look on the judge’s face as he said: 

’This is very strange, Harold, that you cannot tell who gave them to you, and with some people will be construed against you.’

’Yes, I know it; but I would rather bear it than have that person’s name brought in question,’ was Harold’s reply.

‘Do you think that person took them?’ the judge asked.

‘No, a thousand times, no!’ and Harold leaped to his feet and began to pace the floor hurriedly.  ’They never took them, never; I’d swear to that with my life.  Don’t talk any more about it, please; I can’t bear it.  I have gone through so much to-day, and last night I never slept a wink.  Oh, I am so tired!’ and with a groan he threw himself again upon the couch, and, closing his eyes, dropped almost instantly into a heavy slumber, from which the judge did not rouse him until after dinner, when he ordered some refreshments sent to his room, and himself awoke the young man, whose face looked pinched, and white, and haggard, and who could only swallow a cup of coffee and a part of a biscuit.

‘I am so tired,’ he kept repeating; ’but I shall be better in the morning;’ and long before the night train had come he was in bed sleeping off the effects of the day’s excitement.

The next morning when he went down to the office he was surprised and bewildered at the crowd which gathered around him—­the friends who had came on the train to stand by and defend him, if necessary; and as the home faces he had known all his life looked kindly into his, and the familiar voices of his boyhood told him of sympathy for and faith in him, while hand after hand took his in a friendly clasp, that of Dick St. Claire clinging to his with a grasp which said plainer than words could have done:  ‘I believe in you, Hal, and am so sorry for you,’ the tension of his nerves gave way entirely, and, sinking down in their midst, he cried like a child when freed from some terrible danger.

He had not thought before that he cared for himself what people said, but he knew now that he did, and this assurance of confidence from his friends unnerved him for a time; then, dashing away his tears and lifting up his face, on which his old winning smile was breaking, he said: