‘I’m not in want of money. Gold is but dross now. I’ve plenty of it; but its value in my eyes is gone.’
‘But,’ remonstrated Kornicker, holding his hands behind him, and looking obstinately in another direction, partly to avoid taking the pocket-book and partly to resist the solicitations of his own necessities, which were strenuously urging him to do so, ‘but you may want a lawyer to fight for you at your trial.’
‘For that farce I am prepared. I have one. He’s paid for it, and he’ll fight,’ said Rust. ‘It will avail nothing, for I did slay the man. It was a cold-blooded, deliberate murder. I planned it; I went up to that place with the stern determination to commit it; and I did commit it. It was no hasty act, done in a moment of fierce and sudden passion; but a deed duly and deliberately meditated, and one that I would repeat. What he had done, it’s useless to mention. I had no redress, except what my own hand could give me. He has paid his forfeit, and I’ll pay mine. I’ll fight to the last; because,’ added he, with that expression of stern purpose which so often settled on his face, ‘Michael Rust never yields; and then, let the law do its worst. Take your money; I don’t need it.’
Kornicker hesitated; and then thrusting it in his pocket, said: ‘I suppose, if you should happen to be short, you’ll let me know.’
‘I will,’ replied Rust; ‘but I’ve enough to last until my sand is run out. They’ll hang me.’
‘Don’t talk so,’ exclaimed Kornicker, with a feeling not a little akin to fear, at the cold, indifferent manner in which the other spoke. ‘You may escape—who knows?’
Rust looked at him steadily, and then said, in a low, calm voice: ‘If it were not that man and law were leagued against me to force me to my doom, not one dollar would Michael Rust give to add an hour to his life. He looks to the grave only as that dark abyss which knows neither thought nor care; where the past is forgotten; where the future ends. Death is but a deep dreamless sleep, which has no waking. Yet even this boon he will not accept, if it’s forced upon him.’
‘But the disgrace, the disgrace of such an end,’ exclaimed Mr. Kornicker, [!-- original reads 493 --]twisting his fingers together, and in his earnestness cracking the knuckles of all of them. ‘Think of that, my old fellow. Think of the stain that will always rest upon your memory.’
A smile, without a trace of pleasure, but cold and icy, passed across Rust’s face.
‘What is my memory to me? What care I for the whispers and sneers and surmises of the reptiles who crowd this world, and who will soon be as I then shall be? What are these very men themselves? Shadows!—shadows! Go—my course is chosen. You can do nothing for me.’