"What I have to say may soon be said. It was not of my own will that I came here with covered face, and since this masquerade is not of my choosing, it may serve its purpose a moment longer. You, Judge Allen, know me well. Governor Eveland, you also are not unacquainted with me. With every one in this room I have come in contact--not as a convict, but as a citizen and an honest man. My association with you, Judge Allen, has involved certain responsibilities, and these I have accepted while I have lain under the law. For this I owe you a greater reparation than I can ever make. I know that justification in the eyes of the world is impossible, but in your own mind--in the minds of others who stand with you--it perhaps may be given me. But a justification is empty to me that springs from personal sympathy. I want it as man to man. For this reason I keep on the mask a little longer." He paused. The Governor had not spoken; he had settled back in his great chair, one hand in his beard. The Judge was leaning intently forward, his hands clasped; he had never taken his eyes from the speaker, save once to glance at Craig, who sat with narrowed eyes and heavy lips curved in a malicious sneer. Treadwell's elbow was on his knee, his chin in his palm, his brows drawn into a frown that told nothing, and behind all stood Paddy the Brick, furtively watching. When the striped figure spoke again, it was in a voice which held a first thin thrill of feeling: "I have said that I lay under the law, but it was through that law's error. I was unjustly accused and wrongfully convicted. I was innocent." The Governor spoke, coldly and deliberately. "You were taken at midnight in the Craig house." "I had entered it for no dishonest purpose. I broke no bolt nor bar--that had been done before my arrival." "You allege, then, that you were not in company with the robbers?" "I was not. They were there when I entered." "Why did you not give the alarm?" "They made me their prisoner. A pistol was at my head." "You did not so testify at your trial." "I declined to testify at all." The Governor nodded. "That is true," he said. "I remember." There was a moment's pause, then the voice continued: "It is sometimes inevitable that the law, whose purpose it is to be just, is terribly unjust. Sometimes the sole clue to a situation which seems to spell inevitable guilt lies in a fact, small in itself, whose significance is such that it cannot be brought forward. This was my case. The fact which would have cleared me could not be told. I became a convict. For six months I was an inmate of the Penitentiary. Then--the way opened to freedom, and I took it. What man would not have done so? I acknowledged no right of the law over my body. I went back to my former life, and took up my old profession here in this city." "Here!" The Judge muttered, under his breath.