“She burned your house after you had attempted to outrage her,” he said. The cold fury in his eyes struck Sleeman’s thumping heart with a new terror. This young man stood to him for the very vengeance of God. Indeed he could not understand why it was that he had not been killed an hour ago for a crime for which western men show no mercy.
For some moments Paul stool regarding him with steady eyes, as if deliberating the man’s fate.
“You know you should not be alive, Sleeman,” he said in a voice low, tense, terrifying. “I wonder if God means me to kill you?”
“No! No! For God’s sake, Paul! I am a sick man! Don’t touch me! I was wrong. I was wrong. I don’t blame her. I—I——” He was shaking in all his body. He looked indeed a sick man.
A sudden thought came to Paul.
“Go and write down what you have said, and sign it! Go quick!” he commanded.
“Yes! yes! What?”
Paul dictated a confession of his crime, and an exoneration of his stepmother from guilt, which the shaking man signed with trembling, eager fingers. He was very near the limit of his endurance, and was anxious only that he should get through this interview alive and scathless.
Putting the confession into his pocket with the other papers Paul turned once more to Sleeman.
“What was your old house worth?”