"I have failed, I grant you. I have made mistakes, I grant you. Won't you accept my humility in this hour in part atonement for my mistakes? I stand alone before you, my bitterest and most powerful enemy, because I believe in the strength and nobility of your character. You are my only hope. I am before you, broken, crushed, humiliated, deserted, friendless—at your mercy!"
The last appeal stirred the soul of the young editor to its depths. He was surprised and shocked to find the man he had so long ridiculed and hated so thoroughly, human and appealing in his hour of need.
He spoke with a kindly deliberation he had never dreamed it possible to use with this man.
"I'm sorry for you, Governor. Your appeal is to me a very eloquent one. It has opened a new view of your character. I can never again say bitter, merciless things about you in my paper. You have disarmed me. But as the leader of my race, in the crisis through which we are passing, I feel that a great responsibility has been placed on me. Now that we have met, with bared souls in this solemn hour, let me say that I have learned to like you better than I ever thought it possible. But I am to-day a judge who must make his decision, remembering that the lives and liberties of all the people are in his keeping when he pronounces the sentence of law. A judge has no right to spare a man who has taken human life because he is sorry for the prisoner. I have no right, as a leader, to suspend this penalty on you. Your act in destroying the civil law, arresting men without warrant and holding them by military force without bail or date of trial, was, in my judgment, a crime of the highest rank, not merely against me—one individual whom you happened to hate—but against every man, woman and child in the state. Unless that crime is punished another man, as daring in high office, may repeat it in the future. I hold in my hands to-day not only the lives and liberties of the people you have wronged, but of generations yet unborn. Now that I have heard you, personally I am sorry for you, but the law must take its course."
"You will deprive me of my citizenship?" he asked pathetically.
"It is my solemn duty. And when it is done no Governor will ever again dare to repeat your crime."
Norton turned away and the Governor laid his trembling hand on his arm:
"Your decision is absolutely final, Major Norton?"
"Absolutely," was the firm reply.
The Governor's shoulders drooped lower as he shuffled from the room and his eyes were fixed on space as he pushed his way through the hostile crowds that filled the corridors of the Capitol.