“Nothing, nothing.”
“How do you know you killed him?” his son demanded with inexorable logic. “What is the proof?”
A low groan escaped his father.
“Men said I had killed him. But my own mind was blank.”
“Who were the men? Were they present at the time?”
“They were four––Sorenson, Vorse, Gordon, Burkhardt.”
“Were you arrested and tried?”
“No. They helped me to escape. Because of your mother, they said, and because they said they were my friends. But I never felt they were really friends. For they were always against new-comers and wanted to keep things in their own hands. You were only three or four years old at that time, Steele, so you wouldn’t remember anything about matters there.”
“What were you doing at San Mateo, father?”
Now that the hideous past at last stood uncovered the son was able to turn upon it his incisive mind; he would drag out and scrutinize every bone of the skeleton which had terrorized his father and shadowed his own life Facts faced are never so dreadful as fears unmaterialized. 311 And more, he sought with all the love of a son for circumstances that would mitigate, excuse, or even justify his father’s act.