"To break into my house, you mean!" he exclaimed violently. "Your own action is the best answer that can be given to any such suggestion as you make in regard to secrecy. What safety is there for me while you are at large in the world? I'm an old and feeble man; you come here with threats on your lips to begin with."
"I threaten you only because I know what you intend to do," I replied. "I overheard you last night, promising the woman that I should be hunted down; even making arrangements with her as to how best to set about that hunting down. Consequently I have to protect myself."
He looked at me sourly for a moment or two, as though making up his mind how best to work round me. "So you've been in the house all night, have you?" he said. "I shouldn't have slept quite so soundly if I'd known that, I can assure you. My duty is clear; respectable citizens must be protected against escaped jail-birds and vagrants of your order."
He sprang from his chair, and made a movement towards a great bell rope that hung at the side of the fireplace. But I was too quick for him; I caught him by the arm, and swung him away from it, so that he lurched and staggered towards the other side of the room. There, panting, and with his stick half raised as though to strike me down, he stood watching me.
"Now, I don't want to hurt you," I said; "but in this matter I am desperate. There is more hangs to it than you can understand. You've done evil enough; the money I stole from you has been paid for in one long year of bitter bondage—paid for doubly, by reason of the fact that I have no name, and no place in the world, and no hope, and no future. You've taken your toll out of me; all I ask now is to be let alone."
"I won't do it!" he almost shrieked at me. "You shall go back to your prison; you shall rot there for just so many years as they will add to your original sentence. You shan't live among honest men; you shall go back to your prison."
I think no shame even now of what I did. My rage against the vindictive old man was so great that I wonder I did not strike the feeble life out of him where he stood mouthing at me. I strode up to him and wrenched the stick out of his hands, took him by the collar of his dressing-gown and shook him backwards and forwards, until at last, half in terror and half in weakness, he dropped upon his knees before me.
"Don't—don't kill me, Norton," he whimpered.
"Then you must swear to me to let me alone," I said. "Promise that, and I'll never come near you again, and you shall never hear of me again. It's an easy thing to do; surely you must see for yourself that I can't rush into the light of day; I should never have come near you to-night, but that by the merest chance I found out that the woman Martha Leach was coming to you, and so guessed what her errand was. Come—swear to leave me alone!"
"I swear—I do truly swear!" he said; and I took my hands from him and let him stagger to his feet.