There was no line in any of his mails from Margaret Conway, the woman he loved with all his soul, the woman who had plighted her troth to him in the impassioned words he so well remembered:
"I am not a woman to love lightly or lightly to forget. Love seems to me a holy thing, and to trifle with it a blasphemy. I have given you my love, Boyd, and there is no power in all the universe that can make me take it back. Even you could not do that. Nothing you might do—even if it were crime itself—could alter the fact that my love is all yours, now and forever."
Upon reflection, he absolved Margaret from blame, and with good reason. Upon his first accusation he had not written to her at all in supplement to the love letter of that night. He had regarded the whole matter as a thing preposterous, which a hearing in the magistrate's court would promptly dissipate into thin air, and it had been his kindly thought not to tell her of the absurd accusation until he could tell her also of the ridiculous end made of it at a court hearing. When at last the matter had assumed a serious aspect he had written her a letter in which he had asserted his innocence but without protesting it in any impassioned way. To that he had added:
"Of course if I am a man of honor I am bound to offer you a release from the engagement between us, while if I am not an honorable man but the criminal I am accused of being, you are free to take your release without permission from me."
A calculation showed that if that letter had reached its destination when it should, and if an answer had been sent by the first returning mail, he should now have the reply. But mails were slow and uncertain in those days and The Oaks lay far up near the Blue Ridge and seven miles from the post office. It might easily have happened that his letter to Margaret had not reached her as soon as it should; or that the shock of it might have unfitted her to reply immediately; or that her answer might have been delayed in transmission. All these were possibilities, and they comforted the young man.
But as the days went by and still no letter came from Margaret the comfort became less and less, until at last he despaired and summoned his stoicism to his relief.
"Why should I have expected her to write to me?" he asked himself. "What obligation can she owe to a convicted criminal? I was a fool to look for a letter. I must bear my burden alone. I must meet my fate with a calm mind."
Then another thought came to him.
"I am living in a fool's paradise. Jack Towns professes still to believe in me, and perhaps he does. But how can I expect anybody else to do so? In view of the testimony against me, there is no room or reason for doubt of my guilt in any sane mind. I must recognize that and face it with what courage I can. I am a convicted criminal, and I must expect everybody to regard me as such. I must go through my life with that brand upon my brow. There is an end of hope for me. I must simply endure."
It was characteristic of him that in all this melancholy meditation, no thought of suicide entered his mind. He had from his youth up held his life in readiness for sacrifice in any worthy behalf. There was never a time when he would not have given it as a forfeit in behalf of those he loved, never a time when he would not have laid it down gladly in answer to any call of duty. But the cowardly thought of destroying it by way of himself escaping from intolerable sufferings did not suggest itself to his brave young soul. It is a man's part to endure what comes to a man, and Boyd Westover was altogether a man.