"Miss Vaughan," I said, "listen to me and believe that I am telling
you the whole truth. The coroner's jury returned a verdict that Swain
was guilty of your father's death. As the result of that verdict, he
has been taken to the Tombs. But the last words he said to me before
the officers took him away were that he was innocent, and that he had
no fear."
"Surely," she assented, eagerly, "he should have no fear. But to think
of him in prison--it tears my heart!"
"Don't think of it that way!" I protested. "He is bearing it
bravely--when I saw him last, he was smiling."
"But the stain--the disgrace."
"There will be none; he shall be freed without stain--I will see to that."
"But I cannot understand," she said, "how the officers of the law
could blunder so."
"All of the evidence against him," I said, "was purely circumstantial,
except in one particular. He was in the grounds at the time the murder
was committed; your father had quarrelled with him, and it was
possible that he had followed you and your father to the house,
perhaps not knowing clearly what he was doing, and that another
quarrel had occurred. But that amounted to nothing.
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