"His counsel----" "Urged every point in his favor that could be urged, but to no purpose. "Poor devil! What must his sensations have been when he heard his doom pronounced! But in a little while, as at the wave of a necromancer's wand, the weight of that dread sentence shall be lifted off his heart, and life shall once more taste sweet in his mouth." "Felix! What would you do?" "Can you ask? I thought it was long ago understood between us what my course was to be should the worst ever come to pass. The worst _has_ come to pass--as I have felt all along it would surely do some day--and it has now, to be faced. Could anything be more simple?" "But consider, Felix, consider! This fellow who was sentenced today is a low, brutal, besotted wretch, who--as was proved against him by the police--has already served two terms of penal servitude for other crimes; who, as I have ascertained, has not a single tie to bind him to life, and of whom, when he dies--and the sooner the better--the world will be well rid. No sane man would seriously think of sacrificing himself for such a scoundrel. Let him hang! Such _canaille_ as he are fit fruit for the gallows." "My dear Rodd, how strangely you must have misread me all these years, if you think it possible that, deliberately and knowingly, I could allow this man to pay the penalty of a crime of which he is as innocent as you are! Granting him to be all that you say he is--assuming him to be the vilest wretch that crawls--his life is the one sacred thing he can call his own till he himself shall forfeit it, and all the unseen powers forbid that I should rob him of it! The thing done by me twenty years ago concerns me, and me only, and I swear that this man's blood shall not lie at my door!" Then, in a changed voice: "Rodd, you remember what we agreed upon long ago in case of emergency? Have you the vial still by you which I gave at that time into your keeping?" "I have." "That is well--that is very well. Fetch it me now--at once." A groan broke from Rodd's lips; too well he knew how futile any further remonstrance on his part would have been. There was that about Drelincourt which brooked no denial. All his life Rodd had done his foster brother's bidding, and he did it now. "How strangely calm I feel now that the suspense is over and I know the worst!" mused Drelincourt, when Rodd had left the room. "My pulse beats as evenly as an infant's. Tonight I shall sleep as I have not slept for weeks. Now that my doom stares me straight in the face, now that I hear a footstep on the threshold audible to myself alone, of what little consequence the world and its business have all at once become to me! Already life and the things which make life sweet have put on an altogether different aspect; already I find myself regarding them almost as impersonally as if I were a denizen of another plant, and had no part or parcel in them. It is a novel experience, and did time allow, I might endeavor to analyze it."