"You'll swear secrecy on the Book?" broke in Judge Henderson.
"Yes!" said Anne Oglesby at length. "If you'll swear to perjure yourself against your oath of office as judge and as attorney—as you've said you would—I'll swear. Is that the trade?"
"It's the only hope he has, the only hope that you have, and the only hope that I have. Absolute silence! Absolute secrecy! I'm going to save him—but I'm going to save my own self, too." A slight color was in Henderson's gray face.
"Oh, you trader!" said Anne Oglesby, all her scorn for him now patent, fully voiced. "You sepulcher of a man! You failure! Oh, yes, yes, I'll swear! And I'll keep my oaths and my promises all my life, so help me God! Lift up the Book! You, too, Aurora."
"I swore it twenty years ago," said Aurora Lane. "I will again. You Judas! You coward! Lift up the Book! Lift it up, so that I may see! Is that the book they call the Bible—that tells of love and mercy, and truth, and justice, and forgiveness of sins? Lift it up, so that I may see!"
They faced him, their right hands raised, and he held up the Book, his thumb under the cover, exposing the inscription which he had not seen for years and did not now see.
"As you believe in God!" began Judge William Henderson.