Choosing a spot in the shadow of a great tree, he sat down with his pistol across his knees. The moon had arisen and cast ghostly shadows over everything. It was a time for repentance, for thoughts of the past with him, and as he sat there, that terrible hour, with murder in his heart, bitterness and repentance were his.
He was a changed man. Never again could he be the old self. “But the blow—the blow,” he kept saying, “I thought it would fall on me—not on her—my beautiful one—not on a Conway woman's chastity—not my wife's daughter—”
He heard steps coming down the path. His heart ceased a moment, it seemed to him, and then beat wildly. He drew a long breath to relieve it—to calm it with cool oxygen, and then he cocked the five chambered pistol and waited as full of the joy of killing as if the man who was now walking down the path was a wolf or a mad dog—down the path and right into the muzzle of the pistol, backed by the arm which could kill.
He saw Richard Travis coming, slowly, painfully, his left arm tied up, and his step, once so quick and active, so full of strength and life, now was as if the blight of old age had come upon it.
In spite of his bitter determination Conway noticed the great change, and instinct, which acts even through anger and hatred and revenge and the maddening fury of murder,—instinct, the ever present—whispered its warning to his innermost ear.
Still, he could not resist. Rising, he threw his pistol up within a few yards of Richard Travis's breast, his hand upon the trigger. But he could not fire, although Travis stood quietly under its muzzle and looked without surprise into his face.
Conway glanced along the barrel of his weapon and into the face of Richard Travis. And then he brought his pistol down with a quick movement.
The face before him was begging him to shoot!
“Why don't you shoot?” said Travis at last, breaking the silence and in a tone of disappointment.
“Because you are not guilty,” said Conway—“not with that look in your face.”