“Because she sat up and prayed,” responded Mrs. Lauson. “She sat up in the garden and prayed against me. Ever so many people sit up and lie awake to pray against me. I won’t have it.”
“Ah!” said the old man. “Do you hear that, Bessie? Remember it, so as to say it upon your oath.”
After a second or two he added, with something like a twinkle of his characteristic humor in his hard gray eyes, “So I saved my life by not praying!”
Thus ended the extraordinary scene which brought to light the murderer of Miss Mercy Lauson. It is almost needless to add that on the day following the maniac was conveyed to the State Lunatic Asylum, and that shortly afterward Bessie opened the prison gates of Henry Foster, and told him of his absolution from charge of crime.
“And now I want the whole world to get on its knees and ask your pardon,” she said, after a long scene of tenderer words than must be reported.
“If the world should ask pardon for all its blunders,” he said, with a smile, “it would pass its whole time in penance, and wouldn’t make its living. Human life is like science, a sequence of mistakes, with generally a true direction.”
One must stick to one’s character. A philosopher is nothing if not philosophical.
