He rose to his feet and stood before the Indian with a dignity and strength that won a gleam of admiration from the dark eyes of his tormentor, and in a voice ringing with passionate earnestness cried:
“But, listen, you damned red savage. You do not yet know all the truth. Donald Payne was never guilty of the crime for which he was sentenced. I was an innocent tool in the hands of the real criminal. It was a part of his plan from the first that some one should be offered, a sacrifice, to satisfy the public. He schemed far ahead to prove some one guilty and thus secure himself. I was chosen for that end. I was promoted to a position of trust with my sacrifice in view. It was all planned, arranged, and carried out. The man who robbed the people and for whose crime I was sent to prison is to-day living in Los Angeles in safety and luxury with the wealth he acquired through the company which he promoted and wrecked.
“The people who hate me, because they believe me guilty, do not know. The papers that branded me with shame and heralded my disgrace to every corner of the world do not know. The jury that convicted me did not know. The judge did not know. My mother did not know. The penitentiary does not know. The officers who would drag me back to it all do not know. But I know—I know—I know!”
He stood madly, superbly defiant, uplifted for the moment by the strength of his own asserted innocence. Then suddenly, as a beef animal falls under the blow of the butcher’s killing maul, he dropped into his chair, where he writhed in an agony greater than any physical suffering could have wrought.
The deep voice of the watching Indian broke the silence.
“Good! It is even better than I could have believed. In my wildest dreams I never hoped to see a white man suffer such unmerited torture. In time, perhaps, you will even come to a degree of sympathy for an Indian, and to understand, a little, his feeling toward the white race.”
When Hugh Edwards was able to speak again he said with dreary hopelessness:
“They will come for me in the morning, I suppose?”
“They? Who?”
“The officers—have you not told them?”