"You simply wanted your uncle's money."
"I wanted my uncle's money."
The gathering indignation of the audience expressed itself at this avowal by a sharp, spontaneous hiss. But the prisoner only bit his lips. The officers rapped for order and Chief Justice Playfair arose.
"I cannot find it in my heart to rebuke this manifestation, unseemly though it be in a temple of justice. For I knew Benjamin Arnold for many years. His cheek at the age of nearly fourscore had the rosy flush of a boy's and his unimpaired vigor was a living attestation of the pure youth and honorable manhood through which he had passed. He deserved a better return from his brother's son than the avaricious greed for his riches which the witness has confessed."
"Your honor," said Harry, "I have not made myself understood. It is not for me to parry your honor's rebuke. I have richly deserved it. I have been selfish and a seeker of my own pleasure. But it would be unjust to my better self, which is now struggling to the surface, if I did not disown the entertainment of such feelings now. I am on the stand under oath and I told you the simple truth about my motives at that critical moment."
"I find it hard," replied the chief justice, "to understand such a frame of mind. If you were present and consented to the fire, as you admit, by failing to check the flames or give the alarm, then it appears to me that you are morally if not legally a self-confessed accessory after the fact."
"The explanation can only deepen my blame, your honor. I itched for money at that time. Yet all that I received flowed from me faster than it came. I had exhausted my mother's income, trenched upon her credit, borrowed of my friends, and still I craved more. I was a victim of the passion for games of chance."
"Then you were capable of the gravest crimes," said Chief Justice Playfair.
"The fact that the witness took the 3 o'clock train when the will was supposed to have been read at 2:30," said the district attorney, "seems to me evidence that he had not contemplated a crime in coming."
"I do not charge that he contemplated a crime when he started from the house," answered Shagarach, promptly, "but I do charge that, finding an opportunity to hand, Harry Arnold, who by his own confession was present at the door of his uncle's study at the time this fire started, yielded to an evil impulse, ignited the loose papers lying about and fled."