“As a still further stimulus to truth-telling on your part, let me make a few suggestions. You are completely in my power. If I choose, I can have you taken hence to General Early and introduce you to him as a man who accepted a commission in the Confederate Army and then deserted to the other side and deceived the authorities there into giving him a commission to fight the cause he had solemnly sworn to support. You know what would happen in such a case.” “Yes, I know. There’d be a drumhead court-martial, and I’d be hanged at daybreak. But hear me, Kilgariff. I’m a gambler, as you know, not in one way, but in all ways. And I know how to be a good loser. I’ve drawn a very bad hand this time, but I’ve called the game; and if I’m hanged for it, I shall not whine about my luck. Whenever I die, and however I die, I’ll die game. So you can’t intimidate me. But before I die, there are certain things I want to tell you—for the sake of the others. For although I have no moral principles and don’t profess any, there are some things I want to tell you about—” “Go on. Tell me about my brother.” “That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about first. Besides, you know most of the story.” “Never mind that. I want to hear it all from your lips. Much of it I never understood. Tell it all and quickly.” “Well, your brother’s a fool, you know.” “Yes, I know. Otherwise—never mind that. Tell me the whole story. How far was my brother a sharer in your guilt? How far did he consent to my wrecking? Why did he join you for my destruction, after all I had done for him?” “It’s very hard to say. Opinions differ, and standards of morality—” “Damn opinions and standards!—especially yours. I want the facts—all of them, to the last detail. Go on, and don’t waste time.” “Well, your brother is a fool, as I said before, though in the end he did ‘make his jack’ and win a pot of money. But that was good luck—not good play.” “Don’t fall into reflections,” interrupted Kilgariff, seeing that Campbell was in a reminiscent mood. “We’ve no time for that sort of thing. Go on with the facts.” “Well, you see your brother was that sort of man about whom people say that he was ‘more sinned against than sinning.’ He always wanted to do right, and if he could have got a good steady job as a millionaire, I don’t know anybody who would have been more scrupulously upright than he. You see, he really thought he had principles—moral character and that sort of thing—when he hadn’t anything of the kind. Many people deceive themselves in that way. I never did. I was born of as good a family as yours, or any other. I was raised in the most honourable traditions, and as a young man I was reckoned a pattern of high-minded conduct. I knew all the time that I had no moral character, no principles. Or rather, I gradually became conscious of that fact.”