Almost like a man in a dream, he knelt down by the chair and tried to pray. What must he do? Life was a tangle, but he entangled it yet farther himself. He, by his own act, had made everything difficult, terrible, tragic. His conscience was roused within him, and as he prayed he seemed to see, as though in a vision, the road he ought to take. "No, not that!" he cried. "Not that! Great God, not that! I could not do it! I could not do it!" He rose from his knees and began to pace the room. His mind was clear enough now, for God had spoken. "But I cannot do it," he said. "If I do what seems right, I shall bring pain, disgrace on so many. No, I cannot do it! It cannot be right to do right! It cannot!" And still he paced the room, struggling, fighting, and sometimes offering wild, inarticulate prayers. CHAPTER XXII THE DAY OF JUDGMENT On the morning of the second day of the trial Paul Stepaside woke from a troubled sleep. Throughout the night he had been living again in his dreams the scenes of the trial. They had been confused and bewildered; but one fact dominated everything else: the man who was his judge was his father! When he woke, that was the first thought that appeared clear in his mental horizon. Before he had gone to sleep he realised that he hated his father with a more intense hatred than when his mother had told her story on the Altarnun Moors. No thought of tenderness came into his mind. No feeling of affection entered his heart. It seemed to him as though all the darkness of his life, all the pain he had ever suffered, all the wrongs he had ever endured, were because of the man who, his mother declared, was his father. And he hated him! It was through him he lay in prison. It was through him the shadow of the gallows rested upon him. He realised, too, even although his heart refused to assent to the finding of his brain, that he must no longer love the woman who was dearer to him than his own life. His sister? His heart made mockery of the thought! No man loved a sister as he loved Mary Bolitho. Only a half-sister, it is true, but they were both children of the same father. Oh, the bitter mockery, the terrible irony of it! And this man, who stood for justice, who represented the majesty of the law, who had risen to one of the highest places in the realm of the law, had been in reality a criminal ever since he came to manhood. And this man had made it, as it seemed to him, a sin for him to love the woman who was all the world to him. His sister! His sister! He had some idea that the English law did not forbid a man marrying his own stepsister, but something in his heart revolted against that. And yet, and yet---- But what did it all matter? He lay there in Strangeways Gaol charged with murder. The first day of the trial had gone black against him, and, although he knew no more as to who murdered Ned Wilson than the veriest stranger, he realised that he stood in the most imminent danger.