They are sending you
papers signed by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, even the
pawnbroker and the store detective, and--and a lot of other folks.
Why, Sheila, you are fully exonerated."
She began suddenly to weep, the great tears raining down her face,
although she still stood erect and kept her gaze fixed upon him.
"Six months! As long as I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we
were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning
to lie to these dear, good people down here--and everybody; while we
were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone
back there to the store and found all this out. And--and I would
never have needed to lie and deceive as I have done."
"Huh! Yes. I cal'late that's so, Sheila," he said. "But how about
me? Where would I have come in, if you had found out that your name
had been cleared and Hoskin & Marl were anxious to do well by you?
Seems to me, Sheila, there must be some compensation in that
thought. There is for me, at any rate."
She flashed him a look then that cleaved its way to Tunis Latham's
very soul. His tale did not remove from her heart all its burden.
She was still penitent for the falsehood she had told in direct
words to Cap'n Ira and Prudence about her first meeting with Tunis.
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