The Heart of a Mystery

by T. W. Speight

"And do you for one moment believe, my dear Mr. Clement, that I should even dream of doing anything of the kind?" demanded John, with a sort of sad surprise. "I loved and honored your father. He was my friend at a time when I had no other friend in the world. He took me by the hand; he found a situation for me; I owe everything to him. You know that I am innocent; your brother knows it; that is enough. Perhaps you won't mind my telling my sister--I have no secrets from her--but not another creature shall hear it from me. Let the world continue to suspect me if it thinks well to do so. I can afford to appraise its doubts and suspicions at their proper value, which is no value at all. Henceforth I shall despise them, and I think, Mr. Clement, a man can always afford to live down a thing that he holds in contempt."

Clem drew a deep breath. The relief which John's words had given him no one but himself could estimate. Still, in common fairness to this generous-souled man, he felt bound to protest against a decision so adverse to his interests.

"It seems to me, Mr. Brancker," he said, "that you owe it as a sacred duty to those who are nearest and dearest to you to set yourself right in the eyes of the world, now that the means of doing so are offered you, and to resume that place in society which you have forfeited through no fault of your own."

"I owe a still more sacred duty to my dear lost friend, as those who are nearest and dearest to me would be the first to remind me if there were any danger of my forgetting it. No, Mr. Clement, I have made up my mind, and in this matter, if in no other, I am determined to have my way and do that which seems right in my own eyes."

Clement saw that it would be useless to press the point further. Indeed, had he wished to do so, he knew of no terms in which he could have urged his plea. How, in fact, could he have further urged the doing of a thing, the outcome of which would have been nothing less than disgrace and misery to him and his?

"I have something still to tell you," said Clem, presently. "You are, of course, aware that Ephraim Judd is dead?"

"Why, of course. It was yourself that brought the news to the Cottage, when I told you how much I regretted not having called upon him, but that I had no notion he was so dangerously ill."

"True! I have had much to think of lately, and had forgotten. Well, Ephraim made a very strange statement, which he charged me to repeat to you after he was gone. He had done you a great wrong, and the only reparation he could make was by confessing it."

With that Clem went on to detail to John that part of the dead man's confession which concerned him; but said no word about the latter portion--that which dealt with what Ephraim had witnessed through the fanlight.

"Poor fellow!--poor fellow!" exclaimed John, when the other had come to an end. "The temptation was a great one, and he was unable to resist it. He was tried beyond his strength, as it may be the lot of any of us to be. It was very wrong of him, not merely to keep back what he knew, but to swear to an untruth; but he is gone where his faults and his virtues will be weighed in the balances which cannot err, and Heaven forbid that I should attempt to blacken his memory by a single word. So, if you please, Mr. Clement, you and I will keep the poor fellow's confession to ourselves. It could do no possible good at this late date to make it public."