She began at once to urge me to come to Chicago.  This was to be a city.  The opportunities here were infinitely rich.  The life was increasingly more interesting.  She knew of my troubles, knew of the murder, for it had been the talk of the town.  She urged upon me a new life.  I did not need to sell my farm—­leave it.  Come to Chicago where fortunes were being made and where greater fortunes would come to men of vision and energy.  We took a walk by the lake, which in reality only came to the shore far south of the town—­south of the mouth of the river.  Here the waves rolled upon the sand.  What purity and blueness in the sky!  To our right as far as we could see wastes of yellow sand, dunes, brush, small oaks and pines!  Back of us a ragged and wild landscape being broken or leveled by builders, by the opening of streets and roads.

Abigail was truly my friend, wise and sympathetic.  Her clear-cut thinking sheared away accidental things, fringes of irrelevancy.  I was so glad to get her opinion on the various things that perplexed me.  She advised me to make the best fight I could against Fortescue.  After that come to Chicago whatever the result.  We parted with a clasp of the hand.  Then I went to find Douglas.

CHAPTER XXVI

At times afterward I reproached myself for not doing more to fix the guilt of Zoe’s death upon Fortescue.  Particularly as it became clear to me that his freedom from that responsibility energized his descent upon me for Zoe’s interest in the farm.  What had my generosity, foolish and boyish, come to after all?

But on this trip to Chicago, whatever our resolutions were on the way, they melted or scattered when we found the half-breed had confessed; also when we talked to the witnesses.  Douglas, too, though he had not slackened his interest in my behalf, had politics to occupy his mind.  The presidential campaign was on.  He was the leader of his party in Illinois; and his presence in Chicago was opportune.

The half-breed was quickly tried, convicted, and hanged.  And before I was scarcely ready Fortescue had come to Jacksonville with his witnesses to prove the marriage.  I tried to engage Douglas as my counsel, but he was deep in campaigning.  Accordingly I turned again to Mr. Brooks.  There was nothing left of defense to us but the cross-examination of these unknown persons who came to swear that they were witnesses to the wedding.  That Zoe and Fortescue had lived together as husband and wife there was little doubt.  Had I not seen them together on the lake front in Chicago?  Had not Zoe then hidden herself behind a suspicious reticence?  These things corroborated the witnesses.

Mr. Brooks’ cross-examination was not very acute.  Perhaps there was not much to ask.  But we had no witnesses with whom to rebut Fortescue’s claim.  I could not conceive how I could find any such witnesses; but I had gone to Chicago and left without trying to do so.  And neither Douglas nor Mr. Williams had suggested it.