“Not Merriwell, but you,” he said. “You told me that you exchanged those cartridges.”
“That time, yes; but had you continued to drink that stuff you would have made the attempt again at another time, and I might not have been around.”
“Well, why didn’t I continue to drink?”
“Because Merriwell would not let you.”
Then Skelding told Defarge how Frank had willed that his enemy should not be able to drink absinth in any form, and how just what Merriwell had ordered had come true.
“You can see what you owe to him,” said Skelding. “You hate him; you regard him as your enemy; yet he has saved you from a madhouse.”
Bertrand sat there, gazing out of the window in silence. It was hard for him to think that he owed so much to the fellow whom he had hated so intensely and tried to injure so repeatedly.
“I have been Merriwell’s enemy myself,” Skelding went on. “It was a long time before I saw the folly of my ways, but the truth came to me at last. I am not his friend now, for I would not ask him to be a friend to me; but I have buried the past, and I shall never lift a hand against him again. Why don’t you do the same, Defarge? You can see how hopeless it is for you to try to injure him. He has the power to control you when you are away from him. It is your duty to go to him and confess that you have done wrong, and thank him for saving you by the spell he cast on you.”
Defarge shook his head.
“I can’t do that!” he exclaimed.