"Yes, yes," said Stratton hoarsely; and, with a hasty gesture, as he clapped his hand to his throat, "I will speak--directly." He rose again and paced the room, and it was while at the far end that he said in a low voice: "Yes; you know all." "All." "Tell me, then--why have you done this? Stop! I am right--it was you." "You are right; it was I," said Brettison, smoking calmly, as if they were discoursing upon some trivial matter instead of a case of life and death--of the horror that had blasted a sanguine man's life, and made him prematurely old. "Tell me, then; how could you--how could you dare? Why did you act the spy upon my actions?" The old man rose quickly from his chair, brought his hand down heavily upon the table, and leaned forward to gaze in Stratton's eyes. "Answer me first, boy. Me--the man who loved you and felt toward you as if you were a son! Why did you not come to me for help and counsel when you stood in danger--in peril of your life?" The gentle, mild face of the old botanist was stern and judicial now, his tone of voice full of reproof. It was the judge speaking, and not the mild old friend. "Did you think me--because I passed my life trifling, as some call it, with flowers, but, as I know it to be, making myself wiser in the works of my great Creator--did you think me, I say, so weak and helpless a creature that I could not counsel--so cowardly and wanting in strength of mind and faith in you, that I would not have stood by you as a father should stand by his son?" Stratton groaned. "Forgive me," he said feebly; "I was half-mad." "Yes." "How could I, crushed by the horror of having taken a fellow-creature's life, cursed by the knowledge that this man was--But you cannot know that." "Take it, boy, that I know everything," said the old man, resuming his seat. "Then have some pity on me." "Pity for your folly? Yes." "Folly! You are right. I will take it that you know everything, and speak out now. Brettison--" He paused--he could not speak. But by a mighty effort he mastered his emotion. "Now think, and find some excuse for me. I was in my room there, elate almost beyond a man's power to imagine; in another hour the woman whom I had idolised for years was to be my wife. Recollect that, two years before, my hopes had been dashed to the ground, and I had passed through a time of anguish that almost unhinged my brain, so great was my despair." "Yes," said Brettison, "I recall all that." "Then that man came, and I was face to face with the knowledge that once more my hopes were crushed, and--he fell." Stratton ceased speaking, and sat gazing wildly before him into the past. It was in a husky whisper that he resumed: "I stood there, Brettison, mad with horror, distraught with the knowledge that I was the murderer of her husband--that my hand, wet with his blood, could never again clasp hers, even though I had made her free."