"Yes, but it is difficult always to obtain such justice. For instance, this young fellow seems to have spent over a year in prison for nothing."
"'For nothing'? Why, did he not entice his father into the hut, and then shut the door upon him, and throw a coat over his head? He has said so himself. 'For nothing,' indeed!"
Upon this the rapid stream of sobbed, disconnected words, which I had heard before from some speaker poured forth anew. Somehow, I guessed that it came from the man in the dirty boots, as once more he recounted the story of the murder.
"I do not wish to justify myself," he said. "I say merely that, inasmuch as I was promised a reprieve at the trial, I told everything, and was therefore allowed to go free, while my uncle and my brother were sentenced to penal servitude."
"But you KNEW that they had agreed to kill him?"
"Well, it is my idea that at first they intended only to give him a good fright. Never did my father recognise me as his son—always he called me a Jesuit."
The gruffer of the two voices pulled up the speaker.
"To think," it said, "that you can actually talk about it all!"
"Why shouldn't I? My father brought tears to the eyes of many an innocent person."
"A fig for people's tears! If our causes of tears were one and all to be murdered, what would the state of things become? Shed tears, but never blood; for blood is not yours to shed. And even if you should believe your own blood to be your own, know that it is not so, that your blood does not belong to you, but to Someone Else."