“About these papers that Harding wanted you to get from Brant: what were they?” “I don’t know--some affidavits or something that Brant was holding over him.” “How were you to get them?” “Any way I could. I was--to--steal them--I suppose.” “And you--you deliberately put your honour, my honour, the good name you have made a hissing and a reproach, on the table as a stake in a game of cards!” “I--I thought it was only a joke--before God, I did! And when I found out it wasn’t, I kicked, and we quarrelled.” The dreadful suspicion that had just sent Dorothy sobbing to her room seized upon the judge and gripped him till his knees trembled. “You--you quarrelled?” he echoed. “Go on--go on, my son; let me know the worst.” It is a hardened son indeed who can look unmoved upon the vicarious anguish of a father. William Langford was not unmoved, but the churlish habit had grown to be second nature, and all the gates of generous expression were closed and barred. He went on as if it were another’s story, and not his own, that he was telling. “He cursed me, and said I’d have to do it. I swore I wouldn’t, and when I started to get up he held his gun on me. That scared me, but it made me madder, too, and I told him I wouldn’t talk any more till he put that gun down. He did put it down--laid it on the table--and I jumped for it. I don’t know just what I meant to do if I got hold of it. Part of the time I wanted to kill him, and part of the time I was scared stiff for fear he’d kill me.” The culprit stopped to take breath. The effort of such continuous truth-telling was exhausting. “Go on,” said the father. “I don’t know as I can--so that you’ll understand. When I jumped for the pistol everything seemed to happen at once. The room was only a little box of a place, lighted by an electric globe sticking out from the wall at the end nearest the door. There was a big chandelier hanging from the ceiling right over the table, but that wasn’t lighted. Just as I jumped up the light went out with a smash, and there were three of us grabbing for the pistol on the table, instead of two. I got hold of it, somebody snatched it and pushed me back, and the shot was fired, all in the same breath. Then some one on the outside snapped the key of the big chandelier, and I saw that Harding was shot right where he sat.” The judge crossed the room unsteadily and laid his hand on his son’s head. “William, you say ‘the shot was fired’; tell me, as you hope to be forgiven, did you fire that shot?” The boy hesitated, doubting for the moment his ability to answer the question truthfully. The memories of the past eight-and-forty hours were like those of a fantastic dream in which a single incident more or less was hard to affirm or deny.