“Yes,” said Brettison, “I recall all that.”
“Then that man came, and I was face to face with the knowledge that once more my hopes were crushed, and—he fell.”
Stratton ceased speaking, and sat gazing wildly before him into the past.
It was in a husky whisper that he resumed:
“I stood there, Brettison, mad with horror, distraught with the knowledge that I was the murderer of her husband—that my hand, wet with his blood, could never again clasp hers, even though I had made her free.”
The old man bent his head; and, gathering strength of mind and speech, now that he was at last speaking out openly in his defence, Stratton went on:
“It was horrible—horrible! There it is, all back again before my eyes, and I feel again the stabbing, sickening pain of the bullet wound which scored my shoulder, mingled with the far worse agony of my brain. I had killed her husband—the escaped convict; and, above the feeling that all was over now, that my future was blasted, came the knowledge that, as soon as I called for help, as soon as the police investigated the matter, my life was not worth a month’s purchase. For what was my defence?”
Brettison satin silence, smoking calmly.
“That this man had made his existence known to me, shown by his presence that his supposed death was a shadow—that, after his desperate plunge into the sea, he had managed to swim ashore and remain in hiding; the dark night’s work and the belief that he had fallen shot, being his cloak; and the search for the body of a convict soon being at an end. You see all this?”
Brettison bowed his head.