"How did ye know? Who betrayed me?"
"I can't tell you that. I knew that, if you succeeded, you would ruin your life—as well as end his. You are bound to see sometime that all this idea of a man's being his own judge and jury and executioner is wicked, and then—if you had succeeded—" She raised her hands in a despairing gesture, and broke off.
Once more the boy had become stiff in his attitude, and his face seemed a gargoyle of hatred.
"Ef I'm goin' ter be so plumb miserable erbout hit," he said slowly, "I mout as well suffer fer a couple as fer one. Who war hit thet betrayed me?"
Minerva shook her head.
"You think of Henry Falkins as your bitter enemy. He isn't, Newt. He's not any man's enemy. Only he has lived in the civilized world as well as here, and he knows that a system that's built on murder is wrong. You know only the Henry Falkins that you've imagined. I know how terrible it must have been down there—at Frankfort.... I know that you had little else to think about.... But just for that very reason you can't trust the ideas that came to you down there. The real Henry Falkins isn't the man you think."
Newt Spooner took two slow steps, and stood before her. As he half-turned, the fire fell on one side of his face, gleaming yellow and vermilion on the gaunt angle of his jaw and chin, and kindling the other and more baleful fire in his pupils. He talked in a monotone, and, as he talked, the girl seemed to see a spirit dying in darkness and confinement, as a potted plant might die in a cellar.
"Ye says I didn't hev nothin' ter do down thar in ther peniten'shery but ter study over false notions. Mebby ye're right, but I've done studied hit all out—an' I've got 'em settled. I reckon ye hain't got no proper idee of what a feller gits down thar in them damned stone walls, with stripes on his clothes an' no decent air ter breathe an' no water ter drink outen a runnin' spring-branch. Hev ye ever tried ter raise a young hawk in a bird-cage, an' watched hit sicken an' die? They aims ter reform fellers down thar. Well, jest watch an' see how good they've reformed me." It was the longest speech she had ever heard him make, but he was not through yet, and she did not interrupt. "Who sent me thar? This Henry Falkins thet ye're braggin' about. Why did he do hit? Out of the sneekin' meanness of his heart. War I ther fust feller hyar-abouts thet ever kilt anybody? Why didn't ther rest of 'em go down thar? Hit war because I war a kid thet didn't know no better then ter do what I war bid, an' because them what bid me didn't stand behind me." He paused and wiped his forehead on his coat-sleeve. "I didn't 'low thet thar war anybody in ther world a feller could trust. Then I came back hyar. I found my pappy dead, an' my ma married ergin, an' my rifle-gun sold.... Then—" His words ended in a sort of wretched gasp.
"Then you came hyar. I reckon I'd ought to hev knowed better by this time then ter be beguiled, but I 'lowed I could trust you. Ye war ther one body in ther world I'd 'a' swore by ... an' ye rid over thar an' warned him, an' hed me throwed inter ther jail-house."
He drew his shoulders back and turned slowly, starting toward the door; but, with his hand on the latch, he paused, and added with cold bitterness: