“He had no right to tell a boy like you.”
“I had a right to hear, Dan,” Leigh cried with passionate emphasis. “I’m the only one who cares for Fanchon——”
“Nonsense!” said Daniel roughly. “Where’s William? You forget William.”
Leigh set his face hard.
“Not even William! Didn’t he sit and wait for her to come home that night? Do you think I’d do such a thing? Do you think any man would do such a thing if he loved a woman?”
Leigh was aflame now, and Daniel was silent. Like a flash arose the picture of William and Virginia. He had felt sure for a long time that William had repented in dust and ashes. The boy was right; no man who loved a woman would have sat there and waited that night.
“Corwin was insulting my sister-in-law,” Leigh went on. “He was lying about her and blackening her. I wouldn’t stand for it. I didn’t wait to tell father. Father has never been just to her. I went home and got his pistol. I was going to hold it to Corwin’s head and make him write a retraction—that’s what I went there to do!”
Daniel shook his head mournfully. He recognized the familiar methods of the heroes of light fiction and the movies. Leigh had been acting a story, or, rather, he had started to act a story, and had failed. How in the world could he get this side of it—before a jury?
“What did Corwin say? What did he do when you got there, Leigh? What made you shoot an unarmed man?”
Leigh winced. His brother’s tone, and the bald statement of an ugly fact, drove the truth home, but he set his teeth hard, scowling into space for a moment. The change in him moved Daniel again. Leigh had been a boy in the morning; to-night he had killed a man!