Could it occur that he would not be believed? that when he said "Take me, I am a perjurer," they would answer, "No, your self-denunciation is only a freak of revenge, a mad attempt to injure the relative who has turned you out of his house?" Hugh Ritson laughed as the grim irony of such a possible situation flashed upon him: a man self-condemned and saved from punishment by the defense of his enemy! There was a knock at his door. In his stupor he was not at first conscious of what the knock meant. At length he recalled himself and cried: "Come in." Gubblum Oglethorpe entered. "The men on the twelve o'clock shift are just about ganging down, and they want to tak' a few mair forks with them. They've telt me 'at the timber is splitting like matchwood under the sandy vein." Hugh Ritson made an effort to gather the purport of Gubblum's message. "Tell them to take the forks," he said in a low tone. Gubblum was backing out, and stopped. "I reckon thoo's not heard the last frae auld Mattha's," he said in another voice. "What is it, Oglethorpe?" said Hugh, his head bent over the table. "Robbie South'et's wife has been up to t' brow, and says that Mercy's laal thing is gone." Hugh did not lift his eyes. "Is that the last?" he said. "Nay, but warse. The lass herself tore the bandage frae her eyes, and she's gone stone blind, and that's foriver." Hugh's head bent closer over the table. "Good-night, Oglethorpe," he said. Gubblum backed out, muttering to himself as he returned to the shaft, "A cool hand, how-an'-iver." The moment the door closed, Hugh Ritson tramped the floor in restless perambulations. What had he thought of doing? Delivering himself to justice as a perjurer? Had he, then, no duty left in life that he must needs gratify his revenge in a kind of death? What of the woman who had suffered for him? What of the broken heart and the wretched home? Were these as nothing against the humiliation of a proud spirit? Never for an instant, never in his bitterest agony, did Hugh Ritson lie to his own soul and say that the resolution he had formed was prompted by remorse for what he had done to Paul Ritson; not revenge for what he had suffered from Paul Drayton. To be a saint when sick; to find the conscience active when defeat overwhelmed it--that was for the weak dregs of humanity. But such paltering was not for him. On the one hand revenge, on the other duty--which was he to follow? The wretched man could come to no decision; and when the fingers of his watch pointed to one o'clock he lay down on the couch to rest.