“Think, then, of my position; put yourself in my place. What jury—what judge would believe my story that it was an accident? It seemed to me too plain. The world would say that I slew him in my disappointment and despair. Yes, I know they might have called it manslaughter, but I must have taken his place—a convict in my turn.”
“You thought that?”
“Yes, I thought that—I think it now. I could not—I dared not speak. Everything was against me, and in my horror temptation came.”
Brettison looked at him sharply.
“The hope was so pitiful, so faint, so weak, Brettison; but still it would linger in my maddened brain that some day in the future—after years, maybe, of expiation of the deed—I might, perhaps, approach her once again. I thought so then. The secret would be between me and my Maker, and in his good time he might say to my heart: ‘It is enough. You have suffered all these years. Your sin is condoned—your punishment is at an end.’ I tell you I thought all that, and in my madness I dared not let the thing be known. She would know it, too, and if she did I felt that hope would be dead indeed, and that I had, too, better die.”
Stratton ceased speaking, and let his head fall upon his hand.
“Put yourself in my place, I say. Think of yourself as being once more young and strong—the lover of one whom, in a few short hours, you would have clasped as your wife, and then try and find excuse for my mad action—for I know now that it was mad, indeed.”
“Yes, mad indeed,” muttered Brettison.
“Well, I need say no more. You know so much, you must know the rest. They came to me, fearing I had been killed—robbed and murdered. They found me at last, when I was forced to admit them, looking, I suppose, a maniac; for I felt one then, compelled to face them, and hear the old man’s reproaches, in horror lest they should discover the wretched convict lying dead, and no word to say in my defence. Nature could bear no more. My wound robbed me of all power to act, and I fainted—to come to, fearing that all was discovered; but their imaginations had led them astray. They had found my wound and the pistol. It was an attempt at suicide. Poor Guest recalled the first—I do not wonder. And they went away at last, looking upon me as a vile betrayer of the woman I loved, and sought in their minds for the reason of my despair, and the cowardly act I had attempted to escape her father’s wrath. Brettison, old friend, I make no excuses to you now; but was I not sorely tried? Surely, few men in our generation have stood in such a dilemma. Can you feel surprised that, stricken from my balance as a man—a sane and thoughtful man—I should have acted as I did, and dug for myself a pit of such purgatory as makes me feel now, as I sit here making my confession, how could I have gone through so terrible a crisis and yet be here alive, and able to think and speak like a suffering man.”
The silence in the room was terrible for what seemed an age before Brettison stretched out his trembling hand and took that of the man before him.