“Of course; you’d have to have some one to defend you.”
“I don’t see that. If I really was guilty of this thing, it seems to me that I ought to be punished as the law calls for. However, that is neither here nor there, for I hope to make you believe in my innocence before you quit this cell.”
“I wish to Heaven you could,” said Will, but his tone was rather gloomy than hopeful.
“Well, I’ll have a try at it. In the first place, I’ll have to ask you whether you think that I’m the kind of man that would murder another in cold blood?”
“Of course I don’t believe that,” said Will.
“You don’t think that I’m capable of lying in wait for Isaac Naylor, and deliberately killing him—not in heat of passion, but with a cool hand?”
“Certainly not. You don’t think that I’d believe such a thing of you as that, do you?”
“Then, if I had killed him, I would have been in a rage, and hardly conscious of what I was doing?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, I think that I can easily convince you that I didn’t do it at all.”