"Your only way, then, to make the reparation you propose," replied Beauchamp, "is to give such information as may lead to the apprehension and conviction of the men who actually committed the murder--for, from what you have said, I am led to believe that you had no absolute share in the deed itself."
"No, no! None, none!" cried the young man, rapidly. "I did not know they were going to do it--they had promised me, with the most solemn oaths, not to hurt a hair of his head, and I knew nothing of it till it was all over."
"Well, then," answered Beauchamp, "if that be the case, you will not only be enabled to make, as I said before, the only reparation in your power for the ill you have done, but you will entirely clear Captain Delaware, and yet run no danger yourself; for in his Majesty's proclamation on the subject, I find that a free pardon is promised to any one of the parties--with the exception of the actual murderers--who will bring his accomplices to justice. So that your life is safe."
"I care nothing about my life!" cried the young man, relapsing into impetuosity. "What the devil, do you think I am going to turn a pitiful king's evidence, and make a bargain for my own neck, while I am hanging my fellows? No, no! I will tell all that I know--I will go along with them, and be tried with them, and hanged with them too, for that matter--I care not--if I am alive on the execution day. But I will make no bargains about my life--none--none--my days are numbered, Mr. Burrel!" He added, more calmly, "My days are numbered; and the last may come when it will--I will shake hands with it when it does. There is only one bargain I will make, and that I know you will grant me; for you were one of the few that were kind--it is about my poor mother I am talking. She has had sorrows enough, sir, and she shall only have one more for me; so, when I am dead, I hope you will promise to take care of her, and let her have enough--if the job do not kill her, which likely it may, too; and that is the worst of it all; but, however, I have made up my mind, do you see, and so you must promise me, that she shall have the old cottage and forty pounds a year to live on; and if nobody else gives it, you must."
"Most willingly will I do it, upon my honor," replied Beauchamp.
"That is enough, sir! Quite enough!" continued the young sailor. "You and I, Mr. Burrel, are quits in some things--you saved my life once; and I can tell you, that if it had not been for me on that horrible night, you would either have been left with your throat cut at the door of the house, or have gone overboard, and to the bottom, as we sailed along."
"I imagined that such was the case," answered Beauchamp; "and all these things tell so much in your favor, that I can not understand how you could suffer yourself to be led into such a crime as that which you have committed."
"I tell you, sir, I had nothing to do with it," cried the young man. "If I had been present, they should not have hurt a hair of his head--they knew that well enough, and therefore they left me below to keep watch. As to the robbery, that I did consent to; and that was bad enough, too--but then, that Harding had the tongue of the devil himself, to persuade one. He got round me when I was ill--he taught me to believe that all riches ought to be in common, and that no man should be wealthy, while another man was poor; and then he told me, that to take the money which the old miser made no use of, and left rotting in his chests, could be no harm; and then he harped upon my mother's poverty and misery, and made things ten times worse than they were; so at length I consented, on condition that he would promise not to hurt the old man. Well, even then, when he came down all bloody, and I saw too well that they had killed him, I do think that I should have either shot him for deceiving me, or should have gone and given him up, as he deserved, but I saw that he felt what he had done himself, and there was something so awful about him just at that moment, that I do not well know why or how, but he got the mastery of me, and I did what he liked, till it came to killing you, which the woman wanted us to do, as you lay stunned at the door. Then my spirit got up again, and I was master of them all till we came over here. But now he has forgotten all that he seemed to feel then--that Harding, I mean--and he talks about it quietly, and sneers and laughs, and looks coolly at me, while he is speaking of things that would make one's blood run cold--and he persuades himself that it is all right."
The strong excitement under which the young sailor labored afforded Beauchamp every means of drawing from him the whole details of the murder, and the events that followed; and he found that the crime, at least as far as he robbery went, had been concerted long before it was perpetrated. The moment for executing their plan had always been postponed by Harding himself, who had assured his accomplices, that a large sum of money, which he knew was to be paid into the miser's hands, and not yet been received; and Beauchamp easily divined that the murderer had alluded to the sum he himself had drawn for, through the instrumentality of the unhappy money-lender. So completely organized had been the whole design, that a French cutter, engaged by young Harrison, had actually lain upon the coast for several days, in order to carry the three culprits to Havre, whence they were instantly to embark for America. The master of the vessel, however, tired of waiting, had at length left the coast on the very night that the murder was committed; and the only means of escape that the four accomplices found when they reached the beach, was the boat which the young sailor had provided, with money furnished by Harding, for the purpose of conveying them from the shore to the ship, without the necessity of making signals, which might have betrayed them. The woman had, indeed, nearly brought the coast-guard upon them, by accidentally falling into the sea as they embarked, and screaming for help; but, nevertheless, they got her into the boat, and pushed off before any one came up. On their arrival in France, the young man added, they had taken, under Harding's directions, those measures of precaution which had baffled Beauchamp and the officers in their pursuit, and had at length arrived in Paris, where he, who might be considered as their leader, had boasted that he could lie concealed if all the police of France and England were set upon his track. Here he proposed to sell a variety of different articles of jewelry and plate, which he and his companion had contrived to bring with them, and then to take ship for the land of Columbus, as they originally had proposed. Harding, the young sailor said, had soon lost all appearance of that remorse which he had felt at first; but he described him at the same time as living in a state of reckless debauchery and excitement, from which Beauchamp argued that the never-dying worm was still tremendously alive within his 'bosom. He drank deep, Walter Harrison added, without getting drunk. The woman whom he had brought with him, and had before seduced, he treated with contempt and cruelty. He gamed, also, continually, in the lower and more brutal resorts of Parisian blacklegs and madmen; and, gratifying every passion to excess, it was evident that he was striving to drown the voice of remorse in a tide of gross and eager licentiousness.
"It is a fearful picture," said Beauchamp. "But now tell me how and when we can bring this atrocious villain to punishment. You, my poor young man, he has misled and betrayed; and I do not even know that his crime toward you is not of a deeper die than that which he committed on the person of the wretched old man at Ryebury. He could but kill the body of the one--"