‘Phil!’
‘Well, what do you make of it all—all this evidence?’
‘How did it happen?’ asked innocent Carrie.
‘I fear you know as much as I do. Prior did it, I fancy; took off his shoes and followed my father and killed him—that’s all I can think, but there’s not a ghost of fact to go to prove this. They had not even quarrelled, to my knowledge at least.’
‘O Phil! don’t look like that! Oh, you are not a boy any longer,’ said Carrie, for she had caught the strange new expression of his eyes again as he spoke.
‘I have been a boy too long,’ said Philip; he shook his head and smiled at Carrie as if she were a child; ‘and now I have grown old in a night—like Jack’s bean-stalk. Come and let me speak all my discontent to my love, and years after this she will remember, and will credit me with all I wished to do rather than all I left undone.’
Carrie looked up wonderingly, and Philip spoke on—
‘Oh, that’s the bitterness, Carrie; it’s not a shameful death, or leaving the happy world even—and hasn’t it been happy! No; I’d stand that if I left anything behind. But just to go out like a candle—phew!’—he blew into the air as if at a flame,—‘bright one minute, snuffed out the next. ’Tis ghastly. I cannot realise, it, Carrie; I won’t—I won’t, ’tis miserable injustice.’
Phil rose and paced about the cell for a moment, then he came and sat down beside Carrie again, and took her hand in his.
‘You don’t understand, you know, my heart,’ he said with something of his old lightness for a moment; ‘for I scarce think you ever felt thus. You now, if you were to die along with me, would not feel a pang, I believe.’