"What I have to say must be said briefly and quickly," said Peter, sitting up. "I will not give myself the pain," he added, "to think very much about the past. It is all too dark and horrible. But I make this confession, unasked for and being still in possession of all my faculties and reasoning power."
He spoke very slowly, and Dick wrote down the confession as he made it.
"I am guilty, gentlemen. Dare I say 'with extenuating circumstances'? That, however, will be for you to consider. As the matter stands I do not beg for my life, but rather that you should deal with me as I deserve to be treated.
"Death, believe me, gentlemen, is in my case preferable to life. But listen and judge for yourselves, and if parts of my story need confirmation, behold yonder is Kaloomah, and he it was whom I hired to carry your adopted sister away, where in all human probability she could never more be heard of again. Have you got all that down?"
"I have," said Dick.
"But," said Roland, "what reason had you to take so terrible a revenge on those who never harmed you, if revenge indeed it was?"
"It was not revenge. What I did, I did for greed of gold. Listen.
"I was happy in England, and had I only been content, I might now have been married and in comfort, but I fell, and am now the heart-broken villain you see before you.
"You know the will your uncle made, Mr. St. Clair?"
"I have only heard of it."