“Leonard, no one—no one—no one was in the wood but only those two—and they quarrelled, and the Squire was taller than his brother—and we have found the truth. Leonard, my poor friend—my cousin—we have found the truth.”
She drew herself away from him, and sank back into her chair, hiding her face in her hands.
Leonard dropped the papers.
“Constance!” he cried. For in a moment the truth flashed across his brain—the truth that explained everything—the despair of the wretched man, the resolve to save an innocent man, a remorse that left him not by day or night, so that he could do nothing, think of nothing, for all the long, long years that followed; a remorse which forbade him to hold converse with his fellow-man, which robbed him of every pleasure and every solace, even the solace of his little children. “Constance!” he cried again, holding out his hands as if for help.
She lifted her head but not her eyes; she took both his hands in hers.
“My friend,” she whispered, “have courage.”
So for a brief space they remained, he standing before her, she sitting, but holding both his hands, with weeping eyes.
“I said,” he murmured, “that nothing more would happen. There wanted only the last—the fatal blow.”
“We were constrained to go on until the truth came to us. It has come to us. After all these years—from the memory of the old man who scared the birds: from the innocent man who was tried—he spoke from the grave: from the murdered man himself. Leonard, this thing should be marvellous in our eyes, for this is not man’s handiwork.”
He drew away his hands.