Junior gathered his remaining forces. He made a brave struggle to straighten in his chair. The smile that he meant to be attractive was ghastly. There was something beyond description in his tones: “Mahala, you’ve been a long time coming,” he said to the terrified girl. “Pardon my bad manners, I would stand to welcome you if I could.”
Mahala watched him in fascinated wonder and again that awful smile flashed across his face.
“Don’t look so horrified,” he said to her. “This is not fratricide.”
He lifted his right hand and grasping the revolver, drew it toward him. “I have the honour to inform you,” he said, “that at the eleventh hour I have had the decency to remove myself from the world for the express purpose of saving a lady and my dear brother the disagreeable task. In about three minutes, Mahala, I’m going to be a very dead man.”
A door near the closet opened and Martin Moreland hurried into the room. In a panic of terror, he rushed to Junior, calling in a high, strained voice: “Up, boy, up! This is no time to sleep! The mob is hot after our blood! The mob! They mean business, I tell you! They’re going to beat us and strangle us like dogs!”
He rushed to Junior, seized him by the shoulder and dragged him to a sitting posture. “Wake up, Junior!” he cried. “Wake up!”
There was still life in Junior. With a gasp and a rattle, he answered his father: “Too late, Dad, I’ve finished this in my own way. They can’t get me, because I’m not here.”
Then he relaxed, and what might have been a beautiful and a gallant spirit took its flight.
Seeing the revolver clasped in Junior’s hand, and realizing what he had said and what the blood-soaked side and hand meant, Martin Moreland stood still. The room was filled with the roar of angry voices. The door was shivering under the blows that were being trained against it. He raced across the room to take refuge in the closet. He jerked open the door and stood facing Marcia looking at him with cold, relentless eyes. In his fear and agony, he did not realize that she was a living woman; it never occurred to him that she could be standing there in flesh and blood. He thought what he was seeing was an avenging spirit. He drew back, overcome with horror, and then suddenly he dropped on his knees and reaching up his hands to her, he began to pray as he should have prayed to the Mother of God. He begged her to forgive him, to have mercy; he implored her to restore to him the life of his beloved son.
Looking down at him, in a tone of utter finality, Marcia suddenly began to quote: “‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.’”