Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/48

42 and accepted the fact that on a motion to escape he would be instantly killed. They were to return with the next stage, and in the interval Gabriel was placed in an upper room, and securely guarded. Here, falling into his old apologetic manner, he asked permission to smoke a pipe, which was at once granted by his good-humored guard, and then threw himself at full length upon the bed. The rising wind rattled the windows noisily, and entering, tossed the smoke-wreaths that rose from his pipe in fitful waves about the room. The guard, who was much more embarrassed than his charge, was relieved of his ineffectual attempt to carry on a conversation suitable to the occasion by Gabriel's simple directness. "You needn't put yourself out to pass the time o' day with me," he said, gently, "that bein' extry to your reg'lar work. Ef you hev any friends ez you'd like to talk to in your own line, invite 'em in, and don't mind me." But here the guard's embarrassment was further relieved by the entrance of Joe Hall, the Sheriff. "There's a gentleman here to speak with you," he said to Gabriel ; "he can stay until we're ready to go." Turning to the guard, he added: "You can take a chair outside the door in the hall. It's all right it's the prisoner's counsel." At the word Gabriel looked up. Following the Sheriff, Lawyer Maxwell entered the room. He approached Gabriel, and extended with grave cordiality a hand that had apparently wiped from his mouth the last trace of mirthfulness at the door. "I did not expect to see you again so soon, Gabriel, but as quickly as the news reached me, and I heard that our friend Hall had a warrant for you, I started after him. I would have got here before him, but my horse gave out." He paused, and looked steadily at Gabriel. "Well!" Gabriel looked at him in return, but did not speak. "I supposed you would need professional aid," he went on, with a slight hesitation—"perhaps mine—knowing that I was aware of some of the circumstances that preceded this affair." "Wot circumstances?" asked Gabriel, with the sudden look of cunning that had before prejudiced his captors. "For Heaven's sake, Gabriel," said Maxwell, rising with a gesture of impatience, "don't let us repeat the blunder of our first interview. This is a serious matter; may be very serious to you. Think a moment. Yesterday you sought my professional aid to deed to your wife all your property, telling me that you were going away, never to return to One Horse Gulch. I do not ask you now why you did it. I only want you to reflect that I am just now the only man who knows that circumstance—a circumstance that I can tell you as a lawyer is somewhat important in the light of the crime that you are charged with." Maxwell waited for Gabriel to speak, wiping away, as he waited, the usual smile that lingered around his lips. But Gabriel said nothing. "Gabriel Conroy," said Lawyer Maxwell, suddenly dropping into the vernacular of One Horse Gulch, "are you a blasted fool?" "Thet's so," said Gabriel, with the simplicity of a man admitting a self-evident proposition. "Thet's so; I reckon I are." "I shouldn't wonder, blast me!" said Maxwell, again swiftly turning upon him, "if you were!" He stopped, as if ashamed of his abruptness, and said more quietly and persuasively: "Come, Gabriel, if you won't confess to me, I suppose that I must to you! Six months ago I thought you an impostor! Six months ago the woman who is now your wife charged you with being an impostor; with assuming a name and right that did not belong to you; in plain English, said that you had set yourself up as Gabriel Conroy, and that she, who was Grace Conroy, the sister of the real Gabriel, knew that you lied! She substantiated all this by proofs; blast it all!" continued Maxwell, appealing in dumb show to the walls. "There isn't a lawyer living as wouldn't have said it was a good case, and been ready to push it in any court. Under these circumstances I sought you, and you remember how! You know the result of that interview. I can tell you now, that if there ever was a man who palpably confessed to guilt when he was innocent, you were that man. Well! after your conduct then was explained by Olly, this woman, without, however, damaging the original evidence against you, or prejudicing her rights, came to me, and said that she had discovered that you were the man who had saved her life at the risk of your own, and that for the present she could not, in delicacy, push her