I cannot look at that young man--that hideous young man--and think of her and of how she looked and walked the instant before her death." The two officials smiled; they could not help it.

Sweetwater was certainly no beauty, and to associate him in any kind of physical comparison with the dead girl was certainly incongruous.

Yet they both felt that the point just advanced by them should be settled and settled now while the requisite remembrance was fresh in the mind of this invaluable witness.

But in order to get at what they wanted, some show of consideration for his feelings was evidently necessary.

Police persistence often defeats its own ends.