Burton found Henry Underwood in prison quite as calm and saturnine as he had been in the garden.

"Have you made any arrangement for counsel?" he asked, after shaking hands.

"Counsel? You mean a lawyer? No."

"Is there some one you would prefer?"

"Do I have to have one?"

"Oh, yes! That\'s one of the rules of the game."

"Suppose I just don\'t play?" suggested Henry.

Burton laughed in spite of himself.

"Then the court will appoint some young lawyer to practise on you. You\'d better make your own selection. For one thing you want a lawyer to arrange to bail you out. This is a bailable offence, you understand, and you don\'t want to stay in this hole any longer than is necessary."

"Nevertheless, I shall stay for the present," said Henry coolly. "I do not want to be bailed out."

"Why not?" demanded Burton. "In the name of wonder, why not?"

"For one thing, I will ask no favors of any one. I will not be put in the attitude of suppliant."

"If you will pardon my frankness," said Burton, "that is pig-headed nonsense. But aside from that point, you won\'t need to do anything about it. Your lawyer will attend to it. And I herewith offer to put up any bond that may be required, so your pride is saved. It is I who am the suppliant!"

Henry looked neither surprised nor grateful. "I told you that I was not going to let myself be bailed out," he said with some impatience. "Now that they have shut me up in here, they at least can\'t accuse me of the next thing that happens."

"Oh, I see! Well, if you have the nerve for it, I am not sure that isn\'t a good plan," said Burton thoughtfully. "It will certainly eliminate you as a factor, if anything more does happen. Of course if the person who seems bent on implicating you should be shrewd enough to keep quiet for a while, it would not have the effect you wish for. Have you thought of that possibility?"

"I\'m out of it," said Henry shortly. "That\'s all I care about. And here I am going to stay until they get tired and let me out to get rid of me."

"I am really very glad you can take that attitude," said Burton. He spoke sincerely, for the young man\'s manner contained no personal offence in spite of his brusqueness, and Burton was the least vain of men. "It leaves us free to work on the outside,--and of course you understand that I am going to work for you. Now, I want your help so far as you can give it to me. I want to know if you have any idea who is at the bottom of these occurrences,--any knowledge or any suspicion."

"No."

"Of course you must have given a good deal of thought to it, in the course of all these years. You have never had a glimmering of an idea as to who it is that is persecuting you?"

Henry smiled sardonically. "My mother says it is no persecution,--merely the punishment for my evil temper. I suppose you have heard that I have an evil temper?"

"Yes. It gave me a fellow-feeling for you. I have an evil temper myself, at bottom. But as for punishment, what I want to get at is the human agency. It seems incredible that you should have never, in your own mind, had a suspicion of the guilty party."

"What I may have thought in my own mind is neither here nor there," said Henry, knitting his black brows together.

"Have you an enemy, then?"

Henry shrugged his shoulders. "I have no friends."

"Then you absolutely refuse to give me any help?"

"I absolutely refuse to give you what I don\'t possess," said Henry impatiently.

Burton waited a moment, then he asked suddenly: "Did Selby give you back your knife, before he left the surgery the other night?"

The look that had flashed instantaneously into Henry\'s eyes at the mention of that name gave Burton all the information he needed as to Henry\'s power of hating one man at least. But the answer to his question was abrupt and positive.

"No."

"Did you notice what he did with it,--whether he gave it to your father, or left it on the mantel, or anywhere else?"

"I didn\'t notice."

"But you are positive that he didn\'t give it to you and that you didn\'t unconsciously drop it into your own pocket?"

"Of course I am positive. I wouldn\'t be unconscious in connection with anything that Selby was concerned in. If he came near enough to me to hand me anything, I would be conscious of the fact, you may be sure. Why?"

"That knife has been found near the Sprigg house."

Henry frowned.

"The last I saw of that knife, it was in Selby\'s hands," Burton continued. "Well, what of it?"

"How did it come to be under the Sprigg ruins? You must help me to work that out. You are suspected of firing the house,--you know that, don\'t you?"

Henry\'s eyes fell. "Who says so?" he asked doggedly, but without spirit. "Selby does."

But this time he drew nothing. Henry merely shrugged his shoulders.

"The knife is the only direct link with you," Burton went on. "Therefore we must explain the knife. How did it get there?"

"What do I know about it? Or about anything?" Henry asked impatiently.

But Burton was persistent. "There are two possible theories," he said, watching Henry as he spoke. "The knife may have been left in the surgery when the committee departed, and the incendiary may have found it there and carried it off. I have reasons for believing that some one tried to enter--or rather, did enter--that room in the night. Or, as an alternative theory, Selby may have carried it away with him, either intentionally or unconsciously, and then dropped it near the Sprigg house,--either intentionally or unconsciously."

Henry listened with little softening of the bitterness in his face. "There is another possible theory," he said, with something like a sneer. "I may be lying when I say he didn\'t give the knife back to me."

"That is of course possible," said Burton calmly, "but I don\'t believe it. At any rate I\'ll try out the other theories first. Now, here\'s another point. Did you buy a ball of stout twine at Proctor\'s the other day?"

Henry stared. "Why do you ask that?"

"Because Proctor said that he had sold you the cord that Hadley was tied up with. He claimed to identify it. Did you buy it of him?"

"I bought a ball of cord,--yes."

"What did you do with it?"

"I used it to tie up some heavy vines in the back yard."

"Did you use all of it?"

"No."

"What did you do with the rest,--the ball?"

Henry considered. "I don\'t remember. I may have left it on the ground where I was working."

"You can\'t be sure about it?"

"No." Henry spoke with an exasperating indifference. It might have been Burton whose honor was involved, and Henry merely an uninterested bystander. Burton looked at him in great perplexity. His desire to help the man out was not lessened, but he felt baffled by the mask of reserve which Henry refused to lay aside. He so greatly disliked being placed in the attitude of forcing his proffers of assistance upon an unwilling recipient that only the thought of Leslie Underwood kept him from wishing to drop the matter then and there. But he did remember, and he put his pride in his pocket.

"All these matters are for your attorney," he said at last. "If there is any one whom you would rather have or would rather not have, I wish you\'d tell me. I do not want to involve your feelings unnecessarily, and I shall certainly have to confer ............