The doctor complied with his request and returned.
“We all wear masks, Doctor,” began the trembling voice. “Beneath lie the secrets of love and hate from which actions move. My will alone forged the chains of negro rule. Three forces moved me—party success, a vicious woman, and the quenchless desire for personal vengeance. When I first fell a victim to the wiles of the yellow vampire who kept my house, I dreamed of lifting her to my level. And when I felt myself sinking into the black abyss of animalism, I, whose soul had learned the pathway of the stars and held high converse with the great spirits of the ages——”
He paused, looked up in terror, and whispered:
“What’s that noise? Isn’t it the distant beat of horses’ hoofs?”
“No,” said the doctor, listening; “it’s the roar of the falls we hear, from a sudden change of the wind.”
“I’m done now,” Stoneman went on, slowly fumbling his hands. “My life has been a failure. The dice of God are always loaded.”
His great head drooped lower, and he continued:
“Mightiest of all was my motive of revenge. Fierce business and political feuds wrecked my iron mills. I shouldered their vast debts, and paid the last mortgage of a hundred thousand dollars the week before Lee invaded my State. I stood on the hill in the darkness, cried, raved, cursed, while I watched the troops lay those mills in ashes. Then and there I swore that I’d live until I ground the South beneath my heel! When I got back to my house they had buried a Confederate soldier in the field. I dug his body up, carted it to the woods, and threw it into a ditch——”
The hand of the white-haired Southerner suddenly gripped old Stoneman’s throat—and then relaxed. His head sank on his breast, and he cried in anguish:
“God be merciful to me a sinner! Would I, too, seek revenge!”