"I have nothing to confess," he wrote, "and that is why I have not gone to your confessional. The difficulties and perplexities of my life are such as could only be understood by a man of my own age and surroundings. They would be darker than Sanscrit to clerical gray hairs.
"Because I did not choose to answer questions which I could not answer without betraying the confidence of a friend, my wise fellow-parishioners have agreed to suspect me of murdering a girl whose face I never saw till after her death.
"I shall attend to receive the sacrament at the eight-o'clock service next Sunday, and I dare you to refuse to administer it.——I have the honour to be, yours, &c.
BOTHWELL GRAHAME."
He walked to Bodmin and delivered his letter at the Rectory door. He would not run the risk of an hour's delay. On his way home he overtook Hilda, near the gates of The Spaniards. She was very pale when they met, and she grew still paler as they shook hands.
After a word or two of greeting, they walked on side by side in silence.
"I wonder that you can consent to be seen with me," said Bothwell presently, after a farmer's wife had driven past them on her way from market. "You must have heard by this time what people think about me—your brother foremost among them, I believe, for he has given me the cut direct more than once since the inquest."
"I am sorry that he should be so ready to believe a lie," said Hilda, "for I know that this terrible slander is a lie."
"God bless you for those straight, strong words, Hilda!" exclaimed Bothwell fervently. "Yes, it is a lie. I am not a good man. I have taken one false step in my life, and the consequences of that mistake have been very heavy upon me. But I am not capable of the kind of wickedness which my Bodmin friends put down to me. I have not risen to the sublimer heights of crime. I am not up to throwing a fellow-creature out of a railway-carriage."