“You don't mean—you can't mean,” Hoag stammered, “that you think—that you actually believe—”
“I mean exactly what I say.” The young, bearded face was all seriousness. “I stood it, I tell you, as long as I could in my own way, and finally made up my mind that I'd let God Almighty take me in hand. It was like sweating blood, but I got to it. In my mind, sleeping and waking, I've stood on the scaffold a thousand times, anyway, and now, somehow, I don't dread it a bit—not a bit. It would take a long time to explain it, Mr. Hoag, but I mean what I say. There is only one thing I dread, and that is a long trial. I'm going to plead guilty and let them finish me as soon as possible. I want to meet the man I killed face to face in the Great Beyond and beg his pardon in the presence of God. Then I will have done as much of my duty as is possible at such a late day.”
“Oh, I see!” Hoag fancied he understood. One of his old shrewd looks stoic into his visage. If Paul Rundel thought he was as easily taken in as that, he had mistaken his man, that was certain. Hoag put his big hand to his mouth and crushed out an expanding smile, the edge of which showed itself' in his twinkling eyes. “Oh, I see,” he said, with the sort of seduction he used in his financial dealings; “you hain't heard nothin' from here since you went off—nothin' at all?”
“Not a word, Mr. Hoag, since I left you down there seven years ago,” was the reply. “I must have walked thirty miles that night through the worst up-and-down country in these mountains before day broke. I struck a band of horse-trading gipsies at sun-up in the edge of North Carolina, and they gave me breakfast. They were moving toward the railroad faster than I could walk. I was completely fagged out, and they took pity on me and let me lie down on some straw and quilts in one of their vans. I slept soundly nearly all day. I wasn't afraid of being caught; in fact, I didn't care much one way or the other. I was sick at heart, blue and morbid. I suppose conscience was even then getting in its work.”
“I see.” Hoag was studying the young man's face, voice, and manner in growing perplexity. There was something so penetratingly sincere about the fellow. Hoag had heard of men being haunted by conscience till they would, of their own volition, give themselves up for punishment, but he had never regarded such things as possible, and he refused to be misled now. “Then you took a train?” he said, like a close cross-questioner. “You took the train?”
“Yes, I left the gipsies at Randal's Station, on the B: A. & L., and slipped into an unlocked boxcar bound for the West. It was an awful trip; but after many ups and downs I reached Portland in about as sad a plight as a boy of my age could well be in. I found work as a printer's devil on a newspaper. From that I began to set type. I studied hard at night, and finally got to be an editorial writer. You see, I kept myself out of view as much as possible—stayed at my boardinghouse from dark till morning, and, having access to a fine library, I read to—to kill time and keep my mind off my crime.”
“Your crime? Oh, you mean that you thought—”
“I couldn't possibly get away from it, Mr. Hoag.” Paul's voice quivered, and he drew his slender hand across his eyes. “Night or day, dark or light, Jeff Warren was always before me. I've seen him reel, stagger, and fall, and heard him groan millions and millions of times. It would take all night to tell you about those awful years of sin and remorse—that soul-racking struggle to defy God, which simply had to end, and did end, only a few days ago. When I left here I believed as you did about spiritual things, Mr. Hoag, and I thought I could live my life out as I wished, but I know better now. My experience during those seven years would convince any infidel on earth that God is in every atom of matter in the universe. The human being does not live who will not, sooner or later, bow down under this truth—if not here, he will in the Great Beyond.”
“Bosh!” Hoag growled, his heavy brows meeting in a fierce frown of displeasure.
“Oh, I see you still think as you used to think,”