“Be so faithless,” she would have said; but he caught her in his arms and his kisses put the remorseful exclamation to death.
“Say but two words, my darling,” he whispered. “Tell me that you love me, and that you believe me innocent of this last horrible thing, and I shall die happier than most men live.”
But, after all, he had to take the first of the two words for granted. His saying that he should die happy brought her back to the peril of the moment.
“Oh, please don’t say that! I know you are innocent; but so is brother!”
He shook his head gravely and drew her closer. “I wish I could believe that, but I can’t, Dorothy, dear,” he said sorrowfully. “I should not have been weak enough to betray him, even to you; but now you must keep my secret and help me to save him. Try to think of it as I have. You remember what the Man of Nazareth said: ‘They that take the sword shall perish with the sword.’ I have lived a life of violence, and it is only just that I should pay the penalty.”
But her sense of right and wrong was keener and truer than his. “No, you must not say that. Two wrongs never make a right. Can’t you see that your blood will be upon the head of the judge and the jury, and every one who has anything to do with punishing you for a crime you did not commit? Oh, you mustn’t, you must not!”
“I have thought of all that, dear,” he said, “and at times it has shaken me. But there is no other way. It is my life or your brother’s. He is young; the lesson will be a terrible one, and he may live to profit by it.”
His words carried such deep conviction of William’s guilt that she gasped and gave a little cry of anguish.
“Oh, are you sure? Did you see him do it?”
“No, dear; it was done in the moment of darkness. But when they turned the lights on from without he had the pistol in his hand, and I saw him throw it upon the floor. Will you tell me why they say he couldn’t have done it?”