Jarvis drew up his chair, lighted a fresh cigar, and told his story succinctly and with commendable clarity. Hobart heard it through without comment, but at the close of the narrative he fetched a sigh of relief. “These mysterious details, with their open doors of possibility, help me out wonderfully,” he said. “As you all know, I had my first news of the tragedy last night, and it was meagre enough. But, from information in my hands--in fact, from a letter which Brant wrote me a short time before the shooting--I had every reason to believe that he had simply avenged himself on his enemy. Indeed, he swore he would do it if the man ever crossed his path again.” “His enemy?” echoed the judge. “Yes. Listen, and I will tell you his story, so far as I know it.” He fulfilled the promise literally and truthfully, beginning with their intimacy and close friendship in college, and ending with a description of the impressive parting in the moonlight on Jack Mountain, when Brant had promised to turn his back upon his evil past and to set his face toward better things. “What has happened since that night you all know better than I do,” he concluded. “But I may add this from my knowledge of the man: As boy and youth he had his faults, and the chiefest of these were impulsiveness and a reckless uncounting of the cost when he had set his heart upon doing a thing. But he was always as loving and tender as a woman, and as chivalrous as any Bayard of them all. Every one in college knew what Harding’s sister was, and Brant was merely a scapegoat for a half dozen worse men. But because he, too, had sinned, he paid the penalty--would be paying it to this day if the woman were alive. That was one of his redeeming characteristics; and another was his absolute and fearless truthfulness. If he says he did not do this deed for which he is to suffer to-morrow morning, that settles it. He wouldn’t lie about it if the lie would save his life a dozen times over.” The judge was profoundly moved. Twice he essayed to speak, but what he had to say would have naught of formal phrasings. And when he began, the words came haltingly, and there was generous emotion at the back of them. “My good friends, this is no time to let false pride or a strained sense of family honour stand in our way. I have that to add to Mr. Hobart’s story which makes the young man’s hitherto inexplicable reticence a part of a most chivalrous and heroic purpose--a deed worthy of the noblest knight that ever figured in ancient story. From the moment of darkness in which the deed was committed up to the present time Brant has believed that my son was the murderer of James Harding, and it was in this belief that he determined to sacrifice himself to save the boy. What the ulterior motive was you may perhaps divine for yourselves when I tell you that it was to my daughter, and after she had guessed his purpose, that he admitted the fact.”