But the idea would persist, and, growing morbid about it, he found himself reading carefully the charges of judges in cases of homicide. He went to the public library and conned upon the subject in encyclopedias. He read of the magnificent fair play in trial by jury.
"I guess that settles it," he told himself. "There 's nothing to it."
He went on, however, and, reading farther, he came on the ancient custom of trial by ordeal of justice—of the test of a man's innocence by touching the dead body of a murdered man. If the person suspected were guilty, blood would exude from the corpse. A couplet of Shakespeare's was quoted—from the play of "Richard III":
O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry's wounds
Open their congeal'd mouths and bleed afresh!
The thing made his flesh creep. He read of the grisly test of the dead hand, and of the ordeal by fire and the ordeal by poison.
"There 's no sense to that!" he muttered angrily, and little beads of perspiration gathered on his brow. Even the innocent would waver under such a test. Trial by jury—that was the sensible way.
And then, one day, in a bleak sitting-room in the convent, he proposed to Agnes Holt.
"Agnes—" he cleared his throat, and he was honestly husky—"I suppose you have understood that my intentions toward you had a wedding in view. I can make you very happy."
"I must talk to the Mother Superior," she said, blushing furiously, her voice low.
He took her hand, and, opening a case, put a ring on her finger.