Tom Drake flushed a vivid crimson, and for an instant a fierce gleam of anger shot from his eye; then he burst out vehemently:
“No, sir; I haven’t. I’ve always had to hide and sneak about like a whipped cur. It’s all up with me now, though, and I might as well own to it first as last, and there’s no comfort in it from beginning to end; but when a fellow once gets started in it, there don’t seem to be any place to stop, however bad you may want to. I’d got kind of hardened to it, though, until—until that job at Dalton’s that you got hauled up for. I’ve cursed myself times without number for that affair, but I hadn’t the grit to own up and take my chances; though, if I did put on a bold front, every hair on my head stood on end when I saw you stand up so proud and calm, and take the sentence and never squeal.”
Tom was getting excited over the remembrance, and his whole frame shook, while Earle could see the perspiration that had gathered on his upper lip.
His eyes were bent upon his hands, which were trembling with nervousness, or some other emotion, and his voice was not quite steady.
“You’re a gentleman, sir, every inch of you,” he went on, after a few minutes of awkward silence. “I’ve heard charity preached about no end of times, and never knew what it meant before. I suppose you won’t believe it, or think I am capable of feeling it, but I do—I feel mean clear through, though I never would have owned to it before. Here I’ve been for three months and more, making a deal of trouble, being waited upon by your servants as if I was a prince, drinking your wine, and eating all sorts of nice things that I never thought to taste, while you’ve tended me until you’re nigh about worn out yourself. I tell you I feel—mean! There, it’s out—I couldn’t hold it any longer; and if I have to wear a ball and chain all the rest of my life, I shall feel better to think I’ve said it; and I shall never forget to my dying day that there was one man in the world who was willing to do a kindness to his worst enemy.”
He had assumed a roughness of tone that had been unusual for the last few weeks, but Earle knew it was done to cover his emotion.
It was evident that he felt every word he uttered, and that the confession had cost him a great effort, as his nervousness and pallor testified.
It was apparent also that he expected no mercy, as his reference to Botany Bay and the ball and chain plainly showed. Earle pitied him during his long siege of suffering.
He was a man of no small amount of intelligence, and had evidently received a moderately good education before he began his career of crime, and if he had started right in life he would, no doubt, have made a smart man.
Earle had as yet come to no definite decision as to what course he should pursue regarding him when he should fully recover, and he could not bear to think of it even now.