Before Mrs. Otis could speak she asked the question with no preface.

“Didn’t you see him give me the knife?” she cried out, with fiercely imploring eyes upon Jim Otis’s face.

The young man turned deadly white.  He looked at her and did not answer.

“Didn’t you?” she repeated.

“What knife?” asked Jim Otis, slowly.

“You know what knife!  The knife that my brother handed me when I started home from the ball—­the knife that I stabbed Lot Gordon with.  Tell me that you saw it, that you saw me take it, here before your mother, and then you must go to New Salem and testify, and set Burr Gordon free!  He is in prison for murder, and I am guilty, and they will not believe it.  You must tell them, and they will.  You saw my brother give me that knife.”

Still Jim Otis, with his white face, stood looking at her, and answered not a word.  His mother, continually opening her mouth to speak, then shutting it, looked first at one, then at the other, with round, dilated eyes, turning her head and quivering all over her soft bulk, like some great agitated and softly feathered bird.

“Why don’t you speak?” demanded Madelon.

“What is it you want me to say?” said Jim Otis, then, hesitatingly.

“Say?  Say that you saw my brother Richard give me the knife that I did the deed with.”

Jim Otis stood silent, with his pale, handsome face bent doggedly towards the floor.

“Say so!  You saw it!”

Still Jim Otis did not speak, and Madelon pressed close to him, and thrust her agonized face before his.  “Have mercy upon me and speak!” she groaned.

“Jim, what does she mean?” asked his mother, in a frightened whisper.  “Is she out of her head?”

“No; hush, mother,” replied Jim.  Then he turned to the girl.  “No,” he said, with stern, defiant eyes upon her face, “I did not see your brother give you the knife.”

“You did!  I know you did!”

“I did not!”

“You did see him!  You were looking at us when I went out!”

“I was tightening a string in the fiddle when you went out,” said Jim Otis.

“You must have seen.”

“I tell you I did not.”

Madelon looked at him as if she would penetrate his soul, and he met her eyes fully.

“I did not see your brother give you the knife,” he replied, with a steady, unflinching look at her; but a long shudder went over him as he spoke.  The first deliberate lie of his whole life was Jim Otis telling, for he had seen Richard Hautville give his sister the knife.

Madelon believed his lie at last, and turned away.  What with her sore exhaustion of body and this last disappointment her heart almost failed her.  She went back to the settle for her cloak and her hood, and tied them on, while the others stood watching her, seemingly in a maze.  She made for the door, but Jim Otis stopped her.