Over the brink and into the quarry plunged Hooker. As he fell, a wild and terrible scream rose from his lips. Shultz clapped his hands to his ears to shut out that dreadful cry. “Oh! oh!” he groaned. “It’s all over now! That’s the end! He’s dead!” CHAPTER XXVI THE CONFESSION. Distracted, scarcely realizing what he did, with that terrible cry from Hooker’s lips still ringing in his ears, Charley Shultz turned from the old quarry and limped away as fast as he could go. In his mind he carried a dreadful picture of Roy Hooker, lying bleeding, battered and dead at the bottom of that great excavation, and for the time being Osgood was wholly forgotten. On his hands and knees, Charley crawled up the railroad embankment. One of his hands happening to touch a stout, crooked stick, about a yard in length, he grasped and retained it instinctively. When the track was reached, the stick served him for a cane as he hobbled away. “It’s awful—awful!” his dry, bloodless lips kept repeating. “And I’m to blame for it all! I’m the only one who is really to blame. I thought some of the rest should help shoulder the load, but I was wrong. It’s up to me; I can see that plainly enough at last. If I’d only seen it in the first place, perhaps—perhaps this terrible thing might not have happened.” After a time he remembered Osgood, and halted, looking back toward the quarry. “Why doesn’t he come? Why is he staying there? He can’t do anything now. Well, perhaps it’s best that I should go it alone. That’s what I ought to do. No one else should be seen with me. I must face this thing by myself. What will they do with me? I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that I can never, never forget, if I live to be a thousand years old.” His teeth set, he crippled onward, his ankle, if possible, causing him greater distress than ever, though it seemed as a mere nothing compared with the anguish of his remorseful and repentant soul. Not once were the shooting pains sufficient to wring a whimper or a groan from him. His mind was made up at last; he had decided what he would do, and he was almost fierce in his eagerness to do it before he should weaken or falter. The South Shore Road, approaching the railroad at one point, promised an easier course to follow, and he abandoned the ties. Vaguely he wondered what the hour could be, and looked for some sign of approaching dawn, as it seemed that the night must be far spent. To him that night had stretched itself to the length of a lifetime. Into it had been crowded experiences which had wrought in this boy a complete change of heart. In the moulding of his character such experiences must indeed have a powerful effect.