criminate, and I don't see how they can help it, and hold their jobs. No, I'd rather you wouldn't come. I don't want to see you."
"I hope this is not your final answer."
"It is my final answer."
But the tone of her voice was not unkind as she said it, and in her eyes there was no look of hostility.
"Nevertheless," he replied, "I shall not lose sight of you. I shall keep you in mind, and—I shall pray for you."
She laughed a little at that.
"You'd only waste your breath," she said. "John Bradley knows little about prayers, and I care less. If you want to be really kind to us you will simply let us alone and forget us."
"I want to be really kind to you, Mrs. Bradley; therefore I cannot forget you; but I will respect your wish and will not trouble you, unless Providence should put it in my way to render you a service which you will not resent."
She took his proffered hand, but said nothing more to him. And when he had bidden good-bye to the unresponsive paralytic in the wheel-chair, he turned and left the court-room.
A tipstaff came up to help get John Bradley to the street. Through all the excitement of the closing hours of the trial the position of his body had not changed, nor had the expressionless stare of his eyes. There had been no indication in his face that he realized, in any degree, the importance of the litigation of which he was the center, nor its sudden and disastrous termination. Speechless, emotionless, unheeding and unlovely, he had sat the case through from the beginning with apparently no conception of its meaning or its outcome.
The tipstaff rolled the wheel-chair, with its human freight, down the aisle and into the hall, followed by Mary Bradley.
