He strove to speak calmly, but the passion within him burst all bounds; the words ended in a cry of rage, and he seized her arm with a grip of iron.
"Answer me, answer me!" he cried, tightening his hold upon her arm.
"It was true, oh my God, it was true!"
He loosened his grasp and she fell insensible at his feet.
There was neither tenderness nor pity in his face as he raised her, and carrying her in, laid her upon the bed. Without a glance at the sleeping child he went out again into the gathering darkness.
Far into the night he was still sitting there unconscious of the passing hours or the chilliness of the air. His mind wandered in a wild chaos. Over and over again he rehearsed the circumstances attending the finding of the dead man beneath the ledge, and the discovery of the fragment of a woman's dress in the rigid fingers; his horror when he recognized the man as the one he had seen crossing the road near the cabin, and the fragment as a part of Molly's dress. He had secured this and secreted it in his bosom before his companion, summoned by his shouts, had come up. He knew the pattern too well—he had selected it himself after much consideration. True, another might have worn the same, but the recollection of Molly's torn dress arose to banish every doubt. There was mystery and crime and horror, and Molly was behind it all—Molly, the wife he had trusted, the mother of his child!
It must have been long past midnight when a hand was laid upon his shoulder and his wife's voice broke the stillness.
"Sandy," said she, "I've come—to tell ye all. Ye won't refuse to listen?"
He shivered beneath her touch but did not answer, and there in the merciful darkness which hid their faces from each other, Molly told her story from beginning to end, told it in a torrent of passionate words, broken by sobs and groans which shook her from head to foot.
"I met him in the woods," she went on. "I took him to the ledge, because I knew nobody would see us there, an' then I told him everything. I went down on my knees to him an' begged of him to go away an' leave me; for I couldn't bear to—to give ye up, an' I knew 'twould come to that! I begged an' I prayed an' he wouldn't hear; an' then—an' then—" she sobbed, "he threatened me, Sandy, he threatened to go an' tell you all. He put his wicked face close up to mine, I pushed him away an' he fell—he fell, Sandy, but God knows I didn't go fur to do it."