“What time is it, boys?” asked the man on the bunk.
“Three o'clock, Mac,” replied Timmins, pulling on his watch with fingers that shook, and straining his eyes in the dim light.
“Four or five hours more. That's what I hate, this waiting. I'll be mighty glad when I hear the steps outside.”
“Don't, Mac, for heaven's sake!” muttered Buxton hoarsely, his languid drawl gone for once. Then, he burst out: “McTavish, I can't stand this—this thing that's going to happen. It's murder, that's what it is! Why don't you tell all the circumstances of that night Indian Tom was killed?
“It wouldn't get me off, if I did. Can't you see that Fitzpatrick is going to get me, even if he has to do it with his own hands? I did tell about going to Peter Rainy in the woods, and it only strengthened the circumstantial evidence. If I told of the other person I was with when the shot came, it would only draw out a flood of revelations, and not in the slightest change the verdict. Besides, it would bring at least half-a-dozen people to their graves in shame and sorrow. No, Buxton, even if I could get myself off, I haven't any right to do it.”
Donald lighted his pipe again and fell into a somber reverie. For two weeks now, he had been in his cabin, awaiting the end. The men that sentenced him to death had ordained a fortnight in which he might change his mind, and save himself, if he would. Now, this was the finish. He sighed with relief. Then, a tender light came into his eyes. Only the day before, Jean Fitzpatrick, white and still with pain, had come to him, and had begged him, on her knees, to save himself at her expense.
“If you don't confess that I was with you that night, I'll do it myself,” she had cried, beside Herself.
And he had answered:
“Princess, if you do, I'll deny it.”
But even that had not convinced her, and she had risen with a firm purpose in her mind. Then, in the supreme renunciation of his life, he had told her everything; that he was a nobody, according to law; that her father was merely working out to a triumphal conclusion the revenge he had plotted so many years, and that there was but one way of cleaning the slate, which bore the writing of so many lives.