"Ghosts--and hopes," said Fingers.
"Hopes make life," softly whispered Kent, as if to himself. And then, without turning from the window, his hand found Fingers' and clasped it tight. "It may be that mine, like yours, will never come true. But they're fine to think about, Fingers. Funny, isn't it, that their names should be so strangely alike--Mary and Marette? I say, Fingers--"
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. Both turned from the window as Constable Pelly came to the door of the cell. They recognized this intimation that their time was up, and with his foot Fingers roused his sleeping dog.
It was a new Fingers who walked back to the river five minutes later, and it was an amazed and discomfited dog who followed at his heels, for at times the misshapen and flesh-ridden Togs was compelled to trot for a few steps to keep up. And Fingers did not sink into the chair on the shady porch when he reached his shack. He threw off his coat and waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves, and for hours after that he was buried deep in the accumulated masses of dust-covered legal treasures stored away in hidden corners of the Good Old Queen Bess.