The young man fought to command himself, and presently continued in a stronger voice: “Listen to me, sir--only listen to me, and, God helping, I will win your belief and pity. I tried to rob the library--it is all true--and at the last moment my courage failed me. I got home, got to bed, the most abased cowering reptile on God’s earth. Rising the next day to the full horror of my fall, I read in the evening paper of my own mad attempt and of the clue I had left behind me--a thumb-mark on the wall. From that moment hell seemed to have opened. I pretended to have cut myself, and enclosed my thumb in a stall. While in the very act a thought like a stab struck into my heart. I might take what precautions I might: there was another witness to that tell-tale scar in the studio of Mr Lerroux. If the police were to secure it before I could, my doom was sealed. I threw away the useless stall--I was mad by then with shame and apprehension, incapable of judging the extreme improbability of their alighting on this remote piece of evidence. At first I thought I would call on Mr Lerroux and implore him to give me the thing I needed; but the terror of exciting suspicion thereby, and so defeating my own ends, was a sufficient deterrent. Then in a moment my acquaintance with his house and way of life rushed upon me. He lived alone, somewhat freely, and was careless of precautions. I knew that after dinner he never went near his studio, and that to enter it from the back, where a door gave upon a strip of garden, should be a very easy matter. I ask you to believe, sir, that I was by then in a state of mind beyond the reach of reason. Moreover I only intended to appropriate what was already in a manner my own. About ten o’clock I crept round the studio side, treading upon flower-beds, and found, as I had expected, the door unlocked. I listened a moment, and then opened it with infinite caution. All was silent and dark within, save for a red gleam from the stove which stood to one side a little away from the wall. I knew where the thing I had come to seek was deposited; but, fearful of stumbling over some obstruction, I decided to kindle momentarily a spill of paper in order to take my bearings. Stealing to the stove on tiptoe, I saw an envelope or wrapper lying handy, and stooped to secure it. My fingers came up wet and sticky, and, as I kindled the paper, and turned with it in my hand, I saw--O, my God!--my old master lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood.” Grey as ashes, the narrator, unable longer to support himself, sank back into the chair from which he had risen. His listeners hurried to sustain and reassure him.