He rose again and paced the room, and it was while at the far end that he said in a low voice:
“Yes; you know all.”
“All.”
“Tell me, then—why have you done this? Stop! I am right—it was you.”
“You are right; it was I,” said Brettison, smoking calmly, as if they were discoursing upon some trivial matter instead of a case of life and death—of the horror that had blasted a sanguine man’s life, and made him prematurely old.
“Tell me, then; how could you—how could you dare? Why did you act the spy upon my actions?”
The old man rose quickly from his chair, brought his hand down heavily upon the table, and leaned forward to gaze in Stratton’s eyes.
“Answer me first, boy. Me—the man who loved you and felt toward you as if you were a son! Why did you not come to me for help and counsel when you stood in danger—in peril of your life?”
The gentle, mild face of the old botanist was stern and judicial now, his tone of voice full of reproof. It was the judge speaking, and not the mild old friend.
“Did you think me—because I passed my life trifling, as some call it, with flowers, but, as I know it to be, making myself wiser in the works of my great Creator—did you think me, I say, so weak and helpless a creature that I could not counsel—so cowardly and wanting in strength of mind and faith in you, that I would not have stood by you as a father should stand by his son?”