"Laurence tell you?" he panted. "Now don't get mad, Mary--seems as if we'd have to do it. Explain to you later."
Mary lifted her chin haughtily as she gave the Judge his plate.
"I'm not 'mad'--but I certainly don't understand why you and Laurence want to defend a brute like that man. When I think of poor Sarah Barclay, working and slaving away, and those poor little children--I can't see how you can do it!"
She looked indignantly at her husband, who was eating in haste and left the Judge to reply.
"Now, Mary, you don't understand--don't know _his_ side of it--"
"_His_ side of it--a drunken worthless brute--Judge, I wonder at you, defending murder!"
"No, not murder--no, I don't defend murder, certainly not--"
"You've just said you would! The murder of a helpless woman, with little children depending on her!"
Mary's grey eyes blazed with anger, and the Judge, cowed, continued to splutter excuses with his mouth full.
"Now, Mary! I tell you I don't defend what he did! But he did have something on his side, she didn't treat him well--?"
"Treat him well! He came back, wouldn't work, took her money for drink, beat her--Judge, I'm ashamed of you, to make excuses for such a man!"
The Judge, not liking his post of whipping-boy, glanced reproachfully at the real culprit. Carlin pushed back his chair and lit a cigar.
"Don't abuse the Judge, I got him to do it," he said coolly. "And I did it because I was sorry for the man and because he hasn't a friend on earth, nobody to look to but me, and he isn't half so bad as you think. But you've made up your mind and you don't want to hear anything on the other side. You just want him punished."
"Well, now, I can't understand why you good church-people are so hard on sinners. Your religion doesn't teach that."
Mary flushed slowly at the bitterness of this speech.
"It doesn't teach us to defend sin," she answered. "But I don't think you know what it does teach."
"Perhaps not. But I seem to remember something about there being more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just men--in _heaven_, of course, not on earth."
"Well, Barclay repents all right.... But the good people of this town don't want to give him any time to repent, you see. They're in a great hurry to send him, with all his imperfections on his head, to--well, I suppose they think he'd go straight to hell. That's why I've got to go right back."