“I can’t keep you from having your opinion—­”

“Nor can I save you from having yours.  Look at me, judge!” He was bolt upright now, throwing his arms wide with a gesture in which there was more appeal than indignation “Look at me!  I’m a strong, healthy-bodied, healthy-minded fellow of twenty-four; but I’m drenched to the skin, I’m half naked, I’m nearly dead with hunger, I’m an outlaw for life—­and you’re responsible for it all.”

It was Wayne’s turn for protest, and though he winced, he spoke sharply.

“I had my duty to perform—­”

“Good God, man, don’t sit there and call that thing your duty!  You’re something more than a wheel in a machine.  You were a human being before you were a judge.  With your convictions you should have come down from the bench and washed your hands of the whole affair.  The very action would have given me a chance—­”

“You mustn’t speak like that to my husband,” Mrs. Wayne broke in, indignantly, from the doorway.  “If you only knew what he has suffered on your account—­”

“Is it anything like what I’ve suffered on his?”

“I dare say it’s worse.  He has scarcely slept or eaten since he knew he would have to pass that dreadful sen—­”

“Come! come!” Wayne exclaimed, in the impatient tone of a man who puts an end to a useless discussion.  “We can’t spend time on this subject any longer.  I’m not on my defence—­”

“You are on your defence,” Ford declared, instantly.  “Even your wife puts you there.  We’re not in a courtroom as we were this morning.  Circumstantial evidence means nothing to us in this isolated house, where you’re no longer the judge, as I’m no longer the prisoner.  We’re just two naked human beings, stripped of everything but their inborn rights—­and I claim mine.”

“Well—­what are they?”

“They’re simple enough.  I claim the right to have something to eat, and to go my way without being molested—­or betrayed.  You’ll admit I’m not asking much.”

“You may have the food,” Mrs. Wayne said, in a tone not without compassion.  “I’ll go and get it.”

For a minute or two there was no sound but that of her cough, as she sped down a passage.  Before speaking, Wayne passed his hand across his brow as though in an effort to clear his mental vision.

“No; you don’t seem to be asking much.  But, as a matter of fact, you’re demanding my pledge to my country.  I undertook to administer its laws—­”

Ford sprang up.

“You’ve done it,” he cried, “and I’m the result!  You’ve administered the law right up to its hilt, and your duty as a judge is performed.  Surely you’re free now to think of yourself as a man and to treat me as one.”

“I might do that, and still think you a man dangerous to leave at large.”

“But do you?”

“That’s my affair.  Whatever your opinion of the courts that have judged your case, I must accept their verdict.”