"Yes; yes," the girl repeated. "Where is--Hugh, Mr. Santoine?"
"You do not understand," the voice of a young man--anxious and strained now, but of pleasing timbre--broke in on them.
"I'm afraid I don't," Santoine said quietly.
"She is Hugh's sister, Mr. Santoine--she is Edith Overton."
"You do not know me. My name is Lawrence Hillward."
Santoine asked nothing more for the moment. His daughter had left his side. He stood an instant listening to the confusion of question and answer in the hall; then he opened the door into the library and held it for the police chief to enter.
Eaton--he still, with the habit of five years of concealment, even thought of himself by that name--awoke to full consciousness at eight o'clock the next morning. He was in the room he had occupied before in Santoine's house; the sunlight, reflected from the lake, was playing on the ceiling. His wounds had been dressed; his body was comfortable and without fever. He had indistinct memories of being carried, of people bending over him, of being cared for; but of all else that had happened since his capture he knew nothing.
He saw and recognized, against the lighted square of the window, a man standing looking out at the lake.
The man turned and came toward the bed. "Yes, Hugh."
Eaton raised himself excitedly upon his pillows. "Lawrence, that was he--last night--in the study. It was Latron! I saw him! You'll believe me, Lawrence--you at least will. They got away on a boat--they must be followed--" With the first return of consciousness he had taken up again that battle against circumstances which had been his only thought for five years.
But now, suddenly he was aware that his sister was also in the room, sitting upon the opposite side of the bed. Her hand came forward and clasped his; she bent over him, holding him and fondling him.
"It is all right, Hugh," she whispered--"Oh, Hugh! it is all right now."
"Yes; Mr. Santoine knows; he--he was not what we thought him. He believed all the while that you were justly sentenced. Now he knows otherwise--"
"He--Santoine--believed that?" Eaton asked incredulously.
"Yes; he says his blindness was used by them to make him think so. So now he is very angry; he says no one who had anything to do with it shall escape. He figured it all out--most wonderfully--that it must have been Latron in the study. He has been working all night--they have already made several arrests and every port on the lake is being watched for the boat they got away on."