“Blood is blood,” cried Monty, with the veins standing out on his forehead. “That’s why I brought the baby here. I wanted to kill her. Blood is blood. There’s mine in that chair—and it is me, and I am my father and he was his father, and there’s no escape, do you hear? I wanted to kill her because I loved her, loved her, loved her!”
He fell back in the chair and covered his face with his hand and wept like a child.
I looked at the Judge and I could have believed he was a bronze statue. He never moved an eyelash. I could not see him breathe. He seemed a metal figure and he frightened me and the child frightened me, because it slept through it all so calm, so innocent—a little quiet thing.
“Well, Chalmers,” said the Judge at last, “what do you mean to do? You’re going away. Are you going to leave your daughter here?”
Monty’s head was bowed over so his face did not show, but I saw him shiver just as if the Judge’s words had blown across him with a draft as cold as ice.
“I’m going to Idaho,” he said. “I’m going away to-night. I’ve got to leave the baby. You know that. Put it in an institution and don’t let the people know who its father was. Some day my blood will speak to it, Judge, but half my trouble was knowing what I was.”
“By inheritance,” said the Judge.
“By inheritance,” said Monty.
“You love this little daughter?” the Judge whispered.
Monty just shivered again and bowed his head. It was hard to believe he was a murderer. Everything seemed like a dream, with Monty’s chest heaving and falling like the pulse of a body’s own heart.