"Stop!" he said sternly. "Were you thinking that when you did this?" and he pointed to the bed.
"Not then—at least—no, I think not. I just did what he told me to do. But when I saw he was really dead——"
He stopped her again with a gesture, and broke out with brusque vehemence, "Is it possible you don't understand what you have done? Do you know what the law will call it?"——
"The law? No one needs to know anything about it but you and me——"
"The law will want to know how this man died——"
"But you can tell them all that is necessary. It was Blackbird falling at the old road that killed him. If he hadn't broken his back he wouldn't have been lying here, and if he hadn't——"
"He might have lived for twenty years," he said, breaking her off short again with an abrupt gesture. "The law requires of me the exact truth. Do you understand you are asking me to swear to a lie? I would not do it to save my own life."
"He took it himself——"
"He could not get it himself, and the law will hold you responsible for supplying it."
"Oh—Wulfrey! ... You won't let them hang me?"—and he saw that at last she understood clearly enough the peril in which she stood if the whole truth of the matter became known.