“My children—I love them—Let them not suffer for their father’s sin—”
“Wait, Marta,” said Gideon in a strained and trembling voice, “I must tell you—”
“There is nothing to tell—I know it all.—He got to know I loved you and he tried to kill you.—Forgive him, if you can, for my sake—”
“Wait, Marta,—I must tell you the truth—you are wrong—I must tell you the truth, even if it kills us both.”
The dying woman’s lips became compressed, and the colour began to fade from her cheeks. Gideon tried to move so that her eyes, full of startled interrogatory and the pain of apprehension, might not rest upon his face whilst he made his confession, but they followed and held his spell-bound. Then in a hoarse, broken murmur he said:
“Stephanus shot me by accident—I accused him falsely—because I hated him all my life.”
When he ceased speaking he drooped his head and hid his face among the bed-clothes next to Marta’s shoulder. A slight shudder went through the woman’s frame and then she ceased to breathe. Gideon kept his head bowed for a long time. When, by a torturing effort he lifted it, he saw a dead, ashen face lying on the pillow at his side,—the face of an old woman who seemed to have died in sharp agony.
When Gideon left the chamber of death he moved like a man in a dream. Mounting his horse mechanically he allowed the animal to stray homewards at a walk. He met the wagon in which Aletta was hurrying to the death-bed as fast as the team of oxen could bring her, but he passed it without recognition.
The pathway led past the spring, the scene of the three-years’ past tragedy. The day was hot and the horse turned, aside to drink as was its wont. It was not until the animal paused and bent its head to the water that the rider recognised the locality. He was quite calm and the environment in which he found himself seemed appropriate to his mood. He dismounted when the horse had finished drinking, led it away to a spot where it could graze, a few paces distant, and then returned to the water-side.