Meanwhile Kennedy sat in the little cage and talked with the convicted man across the three-foot distance between cell and screen.  I did not see him at that time, but Kennedy repeated afterward what passed, and it so impressed me that I will set it down as if I had been present.

Sanford Godwin was a tall, ashen-faced man, in the prison pallor of whose face was written the determination of despair, a man in whose blue eyes was a queer, half-insane light of hope.  One knew that if it had not been for the little woman at the window at the top of the hill, the hope would probably long ago have faded.  But this man knew she was always there, thinking, watching, eagerly planning in aid of any new scheme in the long fight for freedom.

“The alkaloid was present, that is certain,” he told Kennedy.  “My wife has told you that.  It was scientifically proved.  There is no use in attacking that.”

Later on he remarked:  “Perhaps you think it strange that one in the very shadow of the death chair”—­the word stuck in his throat--"can talk so impersonally of his own case.  Sometimes I think it is not my case, but some one else’s.  And then—­that door.”

He shuddered and turned away from it.  On one side was life, such as it was; on the other, instant death.  No wonder he pleaded with Kennedy.

“Why, Walter,” exclaimed Craig, as we walked back to the warden’s office to telephone to town for a car to take us up to East Point, “whenever he looks out of that cage he sees it.  He may close his eyes—­and still see it.  When he exercises, he sees it.  Thinking by day and dreaming by night, it is always there.  Think of the terrible hours that man must pass, knowing of the little woman eating her heart out.  Is he really guilty?  I must find out.  If he is not, I never saw a greater tragedy than this slow, remorseless approach of death, in that daily, hourly shadow of the little green door.”

East Point was a queer old town on the upper Hudson, with a varying assortment of industries.  Just outside, the old house of the Godwins stood on a bluff overlooking the majestic river.  Kennedy had wanted to see it before any one suspected his mission, and a note from Mrs. Godwin to a friend had been sufficient.

Carefully he went over the deserted and now half-wrecked house, for the authorities had spared nothing in their search for poison, even going over the garden and the lawns in the hope of finding some of the poisonous shrub, hemlock, which it was contended had been used to put an end to Mr. Godwin.

As yet nothing had been done to put the house in order again and, as we walked about, we noticed a pile of old tins in the yard which had not been removed.

Kennedy turned them over with his stick.  Then he picked one up and examined it attentively.

“H-m—­a blown can,” he remarked.

“Blown?” I repeated.

“Yes.  When the contents of a tin begin to deteriorate they sometimes give off gases which press out the ends of the tin.  You can see how these ends bulge.”