Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of him. He gave no sign of hearing. He was living over for himself that scene on a lonely, forgotten Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:
“The lieutenant died, a soldier’s death, the next day.”
“I knew,” said the Bishop quietly. “My question is: Are you the same brave man with a soldier’s brave, great heart that you were that day?”
For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring directly at something that was not in the visible world. The question had sprung upon him out of the dead past. What right had this man, what right had any man to face him with it?
He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:
“You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of the tragedy of my life as it whirled by you on the road! How dare you come here to tell me the little bit of it you saw?”
“Because,” said the Bishop swiftly, “you have forgotten how great and brave a man you are.”
Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He was stirred to the depths of feelings that he had not known for years. But even in his emotion and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set upon his face. His lifetime of never speaking until he knew what he was going to say kept him waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious caution; it was merely the instinct of self-defence.
“For months,” the Bishop was going on quietly, “the people of my hills have been harassed by you in your unfair efforts to get possession of the lands upon which their fathers built 297 their homes. You have tried to cheat them. You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to debauch a legislature in your attempt to overcome them. I have here in my pocket the sworn confessions of two men who stood in the shadow of death and said that they had been sent to burn a whole countryside that you and your associates coveted––to burn the people in their homes like the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that act to within two men of you. And I can sit here, Clifford Stanton, and look you in the eye man to man and tell you that I know you gave the suggestion. And you cannot look back and deny it. I cannot take you into a court of law in this State and prove it. We both know the futility of talking of that. But I can take you, I do take you this minute into the court of your own heart––where I know a brave man lives––and convict you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If the whole world stood here accusing you would we know it any the better?