"Wretched boy! Out of your own mouth you shall be convicted. Where were you on Wednesday morning?"
Tom had to think back before he could place the Wednesday morning, and his momentary hesitation was immediately set down to the score of conscious guilt.
"I was at home most of the time; between ten o'clock and noon I was on the mountain."
"Alone?"
"No; not all of the time."
"You say well. There were three of you: a hardened, degraded boy, a woman no less wicked and abandoned, and the devil who tempted you."
The flood-gates of passion would hold no longer.
"It's a lie!" he denied hotly. "I just happened to meet Nan Bryerson at the spring under the big rock, and—"
"Well, go on," said the inexorable voice.
Tom choked in a sudden fit of rage and helplessness. He saw how incredible the simple truth would sound; how like a clumsy equivocation it must appear to one who already believed the worst of him. So he took refuge in the last resort alike of badgered innocence and hardened guilt.