Darke paused a moment, and then gazed with a strange mixture of gloom and tenderness upon the gray woman.
“Perhaps you, too, madam,” he said, speaking in a low tone, “may be ignorant of a part of my history. You know the worst—but not all. You shall know every thing. Listen; and I beg you will not interrupt me. About ten years ago, I chanced to be at Dinwiddie Court-House, a few miles only from this spot; and one day a certain Mr. George Conway visited the courthouse to receive a considerable sum of money which was to be paid to him.”
At the words “a certain Mr. George Conway,” uttered by the speaker, in a hoarse and hesitating voice, I very nearly uttered an exclamation. That name, which General Davenant’s recent narrative had surrounded with so many gloomy associations, produced a profound effect on me, as it now escaped from this man’s lips; and had it not been for Nighthawk’s warning pressure on my arm, I should probably have betrayed our vicinity. Fortunately I suppressed the rising exclamation; it had attracted no attention; and Darke went on in the same low tone:—
“I was in the clerk’s office of Dinwiddie when the money I refer to was paid to Mr. Conway. It amounted to about ten thousand dollars, and as I had at that time no business in the region more important than hanging around the tavern, and drinking and playing cards—as, besides this, I was at the end of my resources, having lost my last penny on the night before, at the card-table—the idea occurred to me that it would not be a bad plan to ride after Mr. Conway; accost him on the road; represent my necessities to him, and request a small loan out of his abundant means, to prevent myself from being deprived of my luxuries—liquor and cards. Is that a roundabout way of saying I intended to act the highwayman, perhaps the—murderer—on this occasion? By no means, madam! What is highway robbery? Is it not the brutal and wanton robbery of the poor as well as the rich? Well, I was not going to rob anybody. I was going to request a small loan—and so far from intending violence, or—murder—,” he uttered that word always in a hesitating voice—“I swear, I had no such intention. I was entirely unarmed; upon my whole person there was not one deadly weapon—it was only by accident that I found, when riding out of the court-house, that I had a small pen-knife in my pocket. This I had picked up, by pure accident from the table of the clerk’s office, where some one had laid it down. I had carelessly commenced paring my nails with it—my attention was attracted by something else. I finished paring my nails, and without being aware of what I was doing, put the knife in my pocket.
“Well, you may think, perhaps, all this is irrelevant. You are mistaken. Many things turned on that knife. The devil himself placed it in my grasp that day!”
XXX. — STABBED “NOT MURDERED.”
“Well,” Darke continued, “I have told you my design, and now I will inform you how I carried it out.
“I saw Mr. George Conway receive the money—in notes, bank notes, and gold. That was enough; I knew the road he would take; and going to the stable of the tavern I saddled my horse, and rode out of the place in a western direction. When I was out of sight, however, I turned eastward toward Five Forks, pushed into the woods, and about sunset took my stand in a piece of timber, on the side of the road which—he—was coming by.”