“Then you are a dead man!” ejaculated Champer.
The prognostication was too soon fulfilled: poor Thud had received his mortal wound, and expired within half-an-hour of receiving the bite. His end was in character with his career. There was no epitaph over Thud’s grave, or it might have run thus: “Here lies Thucydides Thorn, a victim to his own theories, a martyr to science, of which he spoke so much and comprehended so little.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
UNWILLING WITNESSES.
The confession of Oscar Coldstream received in London, and published in all the papers, did indeed excite a great deal of interest in England. It was the subject of articles in religious periodicals, was commented on from pulpits,and was looked upon as an unprecedented instance of the power of conscience.[4]
Nowhere was greater excitement caused than in a small sitting-room in a second-class lodging-house in Dover, where two elderly ladies were sitting together, one engaged in knitting. Miss Deborah was reading aloud to Miss Betsy a newspaper lent to them by a neighbour, for the sisters did not indulge in the luxury of taking one in for themselves. Suddenly Deborah stopped short, and her mittened hands shook so violently that she almost dropped the newspaper.
“What is the matter, Deborah?” asked her sister in alarm. “You look as if you had seen a ghost!”
“Oh, it is all out—the murder is out! The wretched man has confessed that it was he who threw poor young Manly down the cliff on that terrible, terrible day!”
Betsy was usually slow and sedate, but she now almost snatched the paper from Deborah’s hand, that her eyes might confirm the witness of her ears. She read the paragraph headed A Murderer’s Confession with tears running down her cheeks.
To explain the cause of such strong emotion, we must recur to what had happened more than a year before.