"Then what can I do?" he thought.
Suddenly he saw that every argument he had used with the Governor against putting Bessie to death applied equally to keeping her in prison. This was not a question of degrees of guilt—of murder or manslaughter. Either Bessie was guilty of murder and ought to be executed or she was not guilty (not being responsible) and ought to be set at liberty.
"Then the law under which she has been condemned is a crime," he thought.
This terrified him. All his inherited instinct of reverence for the justice and majesty of the law revolted.
"The law a crime! Good heavens, what am I thinking about?"
And yet why not? Why had there been so much misery in the world? Was it because of the crimes committed against the law? No, but chiefly because of the crimes committed by the law. Yes, that was the real key to the long martyrdom of man throughout the ages.
"If a law is a crime it ought to be broken," he told himself.
But how! There was only one proper way in a free country—through Parliament and by the slow uprising of the human conscience. But that was a long process, and meantime what would happen in this case? Bessie would be dead and buried! That must not be! No, the law that had condemned Bessie Collister must be broken at once—now!
"But who is to break it?"
He trembled at that question, but found only one answer. It shivered at the back of his mind like the white water over a reef at the neck of a narrow sea, and it was not at first that he dared to think of it. But at length he saw that since he had been the instrument of the law in dooming Bessie to death it was he who must set her free.