"What now remained to me to do?" he continued. "To denounce you--to put the rope round your own neck? Undoubtedly that would have been the right course, and had I acted upon the impulse of the moment the whole country would be howling at you for a cold-blooded monster, who had since boyhood nursed his vindictive hatred of his brother, and only waited a favorable opportunity to barbarously murder him. For it was a murder of the most savage kind, John; poor Louis' body was frightfully battered and bruised. But second thoughts deterred me. You were related to me by marriage; disgrace to you meant, in some small measure, disgrace to me; I might, after all, be mistaken in the conclusions I had drawn; it would only be fair, before proceeding to extremities, to give you a chance of saying a word in your own defense; and, though it may be hard to believe, I have really a sneaking regard for you. Upon the top of this came the reflection that you might invent some sort of story, upon the strength of which you would give yourself up and take the chances of the law. A voluntary surrender would go far in your favor, and you might issue from the trial a free man, or if not free, with a nominal punishment for manslaughter. It was perhaps foolish of me to allow these considerations to prevail, but it was the course I adopted. So, bearing away with me the articles which prove your guilt, I stole from the house unobserved. The next day I was in London. A week passed by, and no news relating to the murder appeared in the papers, nor was there any notice of your giving yourself up. This deepened my conviction that you were the murderer. Innocence proclaims itself, guilt hides its head. And every hour that was passed fixed the rope more firmly round your neck in case of discovery. Then I set myself to the task of finding you, and here you behold me with my round, unvarnished tale delivered. I think I am entitled to ask a question. Innocent or guilty, John?" "Both," I answered. "Ah. You have heard my story. Let me hear yours." I related it to him without distortion or exaggeration. As I related the events of that fatal night I was filled with dismay at the weakness of the only defense I could make. Conscious of my innocence, I recognized that my silence and concealment had made the web in which I was entangled so strong that there was no human hope of escape. At the conclusion of my tale Maxwell shook his head and smiled. "It won't do, John. You will have to invent something more plausible than that." "You don't believe me?"