It may have
been so, and it may have been that he had not made his move till
he saw her attitude change and her head droop disconsolately at
the reading of the last line. She did not ask, as I have said, nor
did he tell her; but when upon feeling his hand upon her shoulder
she turned, he was there; and while his lips failed to speak, his
eyes were eloquent and their question single and imperative.
"What do you think of him now?" they seemed to ask, and rising to
her feet, she met him with a smile, ghastly perhaps with the
lividness of the shadows through which she had been groping, but
encouraging withal and soothing beyond measure to his anxious and
harassed soul.
"Oliver is innocent," she declared, turning once more to lay her
hand upon the sheets containing his naive confession. "The dastard
who could shoot his host for plunder is capable of a second crime
holding out a similar inducement. Nothing now will ever make me
connect Oliver with the crime at the bridge. As you said, he was
simply near enough the Hollow to toss into it the stick he had
been whittling on his way from the oak tree. I am his advocate
from this minute."
Her eyes were still resting mechanically upon that last page lying
spread out before her, and she did not observe in its full glory
the first gleam of triumphant joy which, in all probability, Judge
Ostrander's countenance had shown in years. Nor did he see, in the
glad confusion of the moment, the quick shudder with which she
lifted her trembling hand away from those papers and looked up,
squarely at last, into his transfigured visage.
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