“Yes. Listen, and I will tell you his story, so far as I know it.”
He fulfilled the promise literally and truthfully, beginning with their intimacy and close friendship in college, and ending with a description of the impressive parting in the moonlight on Jack Mountain, when Brant had promised to turn his back upon his evil past and to set his face toward better things.
“What has happened since that night you all know better than I do,” he concluded. “But I may add this from my knowledge of the man: As boy and youth he had his faults, and the chiefest of these were impulsiveness and a reckless uncounting of the cost when he had set his heart upon doing a thing. But he was always as loving and tender as a woman, and as chivalrous as any Bayard of them all. Every one in college knew what Harding’s sister was, and Brant was merely a scapegoat for a half dozen worse men. But because he, too, had sinned, he paid the penalty—would be paying it to this day if the woman were alive. That was one of his redeeming characteristics; and another was his absolute and fearless truthfulness. If he says he did not do this deed for which he is to suffer to-morrow morning, that settles it. He wouldn’t lie about it if the lie would save his life a dozen times over.”
The judge was profoundly moved. Twice he essayed to speak, but what he had to say would have naught of formal phrasings. And when he began, the words came haltingly, and there was generous emotion at the back of them.
“My good friends, this is no time to let false pride or a strained sense of family honour stand in our way. I have that to add to Mr. Hobart’s story which makes the young man’s hitherto inexplicable reticence a part of a most chivalrous and heroic purpose—a deed worthy of the noblest knight that ever figured in ancient story. From the moment of darkness in which the deed was committed up to the present time Brant has believed that my son was the murderer of James Harding, and it was in this belief that he determined to sacrifice himself to save the boy. What the ulterior motive was you may perhaps divine for yourselves when I tell you that it was to my daughter, and after she had guessed his purpose, that he admitted the fact.”
A silence more eloquent than the loudest praise fell upon the little group gathered around the editor’s table. Hobart was the first to break it.
“It was very like him,” he said softly; “like the George Brant I used to know and love in the old days. But in our admiration we mustn’t lose sight of his peril. What are we to do?”
The judge shook his head. “While we have cleared up many of the mysteries, we are still far from having a reasonable excuse for asking the Governor’s intervention. If I go to him with the story of these later discoveries he may justly say that these things have no bearing upon our case and refuse to grant a reprieve. I presume it is sufficiently clear to all of us now that this unknown man who broke into Brant’s room and stole his clothes is the man who killed James Harding. But we can neither prove this nor establish the motive. If we could identify this man, and so be enabled to find him, we might be able to show why he shot a person with whom, by all accounts, he was on friendly terms.”
While the judge was speaking, Jarvis was sketching a crude outline of a human face on the blotter under his hand. He did it mechanically, and without realizing that he was trying to draw the features of the man of many descriptions. When he did realize it, he passed the blotter across to Hobart with a query.
“Does that remind you of anybody you have ever seen?”