The Wild Olive. Basil King

      II

       Table of Contents

      "Evie!"

      Mrs. Wayne went to the door, but on Ford's assurance that her child had nothing to fear from him, she paused with her hand on the knob to look in curiosity at this wild young man, whose doom lent him a kind of fascination. Again, for a minute, all three were silent in the excess of their surprise. Wayne himself sat rigid, gazing up at the new-comer with strained eyes blurred with partial blindness. Though slightly built and delicate, he was not physically timid; and as the seconds went by he was able to form an idea as to what had happened. He himself, in view of the tumultuous sympathy displayed by hunters and lumber-jacks with the man who passed for their boon companion, had advised Ford's removal from the pretty toy prison of the county-town to the stronger one at Plattsville. It was clear that the prisoner had been helped to escape, either before the change had been effected or while it was taking place. There was nothing surprising in that; the astonishing thing was that the fugitive should have found his way to this house above all others. Mrs. Wayne seemed to think so too, for it was she who spoke first, in a tone which she tried to make peremptory, in spite of its tremor of fear.

      "What did you come here for?"

      Ford looked at her for the first time—in a blankness not without a dull element of pleasure. It was at least two or three years since he had seen anything so dainty—not, in fact, since his own mother died. At all times his mind worked slowly, so that he found nothing to reply till she repeated her question with a show of increased severity.

      "I came here for protection," he said then.

      His hesitation and bewildered air imparted assurance to his still astonished hosts.

      "Isn't it an odd place in which to look for that?" Wayne asked, in an excitement, he strove to subdue.

      The question was the stimulus Ford needed in order to get his wits into play.

      "No," he replied, slowly; "I've a right to protection from the man who sentenced me to death for a crime of which he knows me innocent."

      Wayne concealed a start by smoothing the newspaper over his crossed knees, but he was unable to keep a shade of thickness out of his voice as he answered:

      "You had a fair trial. You were found guilty. You have had the benefit of all the resources allowed by the law. You have no right to say I know you to be innocent."

      Wholly spent, Ford dropped into a chair from which one of the children had risen. With his arm hanging limply over the back he sat staring haggardly at the judge, as though finding nothing to say.

      "I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause, "when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your convictions—after your charge."

      "That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers—"

      Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in it.

      "A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"

      "The law assumes all men to be equal—"

      "Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent—only they're not. The law is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to death, not because I killed a man, but