One thing and only one thing would now avail Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey Whiting would be condemned to death, unless, within the hour, a man or woman should rise up in this room and swear: Jeffrey Whiting did not kill Samuel Rogers. 234 Rafe Gadbeau did the deed. I saw him. Or––He told me so.

The Bishop remembered how that day last winter he had set the boy upon this course which had brought him here into this court and into the shadow of public disgrace and death. If Jeffrey Whiting had actually fired the shot that had cut off a human life, would not he, Joseph, Bishop of Alden, have shared a measure of the responsibility? He would.

And if Jeffrey Whiting, through no fault of his own, but through a chain of circumstances, stood now in danger of death, was not he, Joseph Winthrop, who had started the boy into the midst of these circumstances, in a way responsible? He was.

Could Joseph Winthrop by rising up in this court and saying: “Rafe Gadbeau killed Samuel Rogers––He told me so”––could he thus save Jeffrey Whiting from a felon’s fate? He could. Nine words, no more, would do.

And if he could so save Jeffrey Whiting and did not do what was necessary––did not speak those nine words––would he, Joseph Winthrop, be responsible for the death or at least the imprisonment and ruin of Jeffrey Whiting? He would.

Then what would Joseph Winthrop do? Would he speak those nine words? He would not.

235

There was no claim of life or death that had the force to break the seal and let those nine words escape his lips.

There was no conflict, no battle, no indecision in the Bishop’s mind as he sat there waiting for his name to be called. He loved the boy who sat there in the prisoner’s stand before him. He felt responsible for him and the situation in which he was. He cared nothing for the dead man or the dead man’s secret, as such. Yet he would go up there and defy the law of humanity and the law of men, because he was bound by the law that is beyond all other law; the law of the eternal salvation of men’s souls.

But there was no reasoning, no weighing of the issue in his mind. His course was fixed by the eternal Institution of God. There was nothing to be determined, nothing to be argued. He was caught between the greater and the lesser law and he could only stand and be ground between the working of the two.