"It is Danvers," he said again.
The sick man turned his head slowly on the pillow, and looked fixedly at him. Death's own color, which imitation can never imitate, nor ignorance mistake, was stamped upon that rigid face.
"I'm done for," he said with a faint smile, which touched the lips but did not reach the solemn far-reaching eyes.
Charles could not speak.
"You said I should turn up tails once too often," continued Raymond, with slow halting utterance, "and I've done it. I knew it was all up when I pitched over that d——d wall onto the stones. I felt I'd killed myself."
"How did they get you?" said Charles.
"I don't know," replied Raymond, closing his eyes wearily, as if the subject had ceased to interest him. "I think I tried to creep along under the wall towards the place where it is broken down, when I fancy some one came over long after the others and knocked me on the head."
Charles reflected with sudden wrath that Brooks, no doubt, had been the man, and how much worse than useless his manœuvre with the stick had been.
"I did my best," he said, humbly.
"Yes," replied the other; "and I would not have forgotten it, either, if—if there had been any time to remember it in; but there won't be. I've owned up," he continued, in a labored whisper. "Stephens has made a full confession. You'll have it in all the papers to-morrow. And while I was at it I piled on some more I never did, which will get friends over the water out of trouble. Tom Flavell did me a good turn once, and he's been in hiding these two years for—well, it don't much matter what, but I've shoved that in with the rest, though it was never in my line—never. He'll be able to go home now."