"Very well. Now, I will tell you further. If you make a clean breast of it, however guilty you may have been, with that one exception, I will let you go free, and in addition give you such a start that, if you endeavor to do so, you can live an honest, comfortable life.
"I will pay for your farm, will build you a house and stock them both, so that you can have no further excuse for going to the bad. But mark me—this is not on your account; it is for your patient, long-suffering wife, and the deeds will be given in her name. Now, what do you say to the bargain?"
"Well, sir, what can I say," muttered Sprowl, brokenly, "but that while I have acted like a dog, you treat me as a white man? Perhaps 'twould be a better job if you put me beyond the way of doing any more harm; I do think so. I have always been a cursed, cowardly fool, and if at times I would try—and God knows that I have tried for Mary's sake and the children's—to break off, here would come a temptation, and down I'd go, worse than ever," gloomily replied the prisoner.
"Well," heartily responded Poynter, "better times are coming now, and if you will only help yourself, others will lend a hand. Cheer up, old fellow, and hold your head up like an honest man; there's a heap of good left in you yet, or you'd never talk as you do now."
"If I ever do get on my feet again, it is to you and him that I must give thanks, after God," solemnly uttered Sprowl. "But where shall I begin?"
"Tell me first about my father; why and how it was that you acted against him as you did."
And then Wesley Sprowl repeated the tale he had briefly outlined to Polk Redlaw, giving every detail in full; but enough has been said to enlighten the reader. It was a terrible tale of revenge and injustice, in which an innocent man was made the victim of a villain's plottings, aided by such unscrupulous coadjutors as Sprowl and Jonathan Green.
As the sad incidents of his parent's sorrow and ruin were detailed, Clay Poynter (as we must still call him) bowed his head and wept bitter tears of grief and anguish. Had he glanced toward his companion, he would have seen that "White Crees," the outlaw leader, had bowed his stalwart form, and it shook as if with mortal agony.
"About your being driven from Arkansas," said Sprowl, "I know nothing save that this same man followed you in his hatred for your father; that he had sworn you, too, should die a felon's death. But you fled from him, and it was years before he found you here.
"He saw me, also, and knowing that I was poor, tempted me to aid him, as I had done once before. For weeks before he made his appearance openly, he was undermining your reputation, by covert hints and innuendoes, that only too easily found holding-ground in the troubled state of the country; and this was increased by your reticence regarding your affairs and previous life.