"Oh, if I could help you!" she cried tremulously.
He apparently did not hear the eager words.
"It all looked so black against me," he went on, looking straight
ahead unseeingly. "Perhaps I shouldn't blame them. I have thought it
all out, lots of times, Christine, and I've tried to put myself in
their place. Sometimes I think that if I were not myself I should
certainly believe myself guilty. It _did_ point to me, every bit
of it, Christine. And I am as innocent as a little baby. If--if they
catch me they'll hang me!"
"No, no!" she shuddered.
"Doesn't it look to you as if I really had done it?" he demanded.
"Tell the truth, Christine. From what you have heard, wouldn't you say
it _looked_ as if I were guilty?"
She hesitated, frightened, distressed. "The papers did not tell the
truth, David," she said loyally.
"They hunted for me with bloodhounds," he went on vaguely. "If they
had caught me then, I would have been strung up and shot to pieces.
You see," turning to her with a gentle note in his voice, "my
grandfather was very much beloved. He was the very finest man in all
the state.
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