“Then suddenly he changed his mind and said we’d go to the office.  That took us along the road that runs through the poplar grove.  It happened there.  I’m not much of a girl’s man, Kent, and I’d be a fool to try to tell you what she looked like.  But there she was, standing in the path not ten feet ahead of us, and she stopped me in my tracks as quick as though she’d sent a shot into me.  And she stopped Kedsty, too.  I heard him give a sort of grunt—­a funny sound, as though some one had hit him.  I don’t believe I could tell whether she had a dress on or not, for I never saw anything like her face, and her eyes, and her hair, and I stared at them like a thunder-struck fool.  She didn’t seem to notice me any more than if I’d been thin air, a ghost she couldn’t see.

“She looked straight at Kedsty, and she kept looking at him—­and then she passed us.  Never said a word, mind you.  She came so near I could have touched her with my hand, and not until she was that close did she take her eyes from Kedsty and look at me.  And when she’d passed I thought what a couple of cursed idiots we were, standing there paralyzed, as if we’d never seen a beautiful girl before in our lives.  I went to remark that much to the Old Man when—­”

O’Connor bit his cigar half in two as he leaned nearer to the cot.

“Kent, I swear that Kedsty was as white as chalk when I looked at him!  There wasn’t a drop of blood left in his face, and he was staring straight ahead, as though the girl still stood there, and he gave another of those grunts—­it wasn’t a laugh—­as if something was choking him.  And then he said: 

“’Sergeant, I’ve forgotten something important.  I must go back to see Dr. Cardigan.  You have my authority to give McTrigger his liberty at once!’”

O’Connor paused, as if expecting some expression of disbelief from Kent.  When none came, he demanded,

“Was that according to the Criminal Code?  Was it, Kent?”

“Not exactly.  But, coming from the S.O.D., it was law.”

“And I obeyed it,” grunted the staff-sergeant.  “And if you could have seen McTrigger!  When I told him he was free, and unlocked his cell, he came out of it gropingly, like a blind man.  And he would go no farther than the Inspector’s office.  He said he would wait there for him.”

“And Kedsty?”

O’Connor jumped from his chair and began thumping back and forth across the room again.  “Followed the girl,” he exploded.  “He couldn’t have done anything else.  He lied to me about Cardigan.  There wouldn’t be anything mysterious about it if he wasn’t sixty and she less than twenty.  She was pretty enough!  But it wasn’t her beauty that made him turn white there in the path.  Not on your life it wasn’t!  I tell you he aged ten years in as many seconds.  There was something in that girl’s eyes more terrifying to him than a leveled gun, and after he’d looked into them, his first thought was of McTrigger, the man you’re saving from the hangman.  It’s queer, Kent.  The whole business is queer.  And the queerest of it all is your confession.”