"Well, I need say no more. You know so much, you must know the rest. They came to me, fearing I had been killed--robbed and murdered. They found me at last, when I was forced to admit them, looking, I suppose, a maniac; for I felt one then, compelled to face them, and hear the old man's reproaches, in horror lest they should discover the wretched convict lying dead, and no word to say in my defence. Nature could bear no more. My wound robbed me of all power to act, and I fainted--to come to, fearing that all was discovered; but their imaginations had led them astray. They had found my wound and the pistol. It was an attempt at suicide. Poor Guest recalled the first--I do not wonder. And they went away at last, looking upon me as a vile betrayer of the woman I loved, and sought in their minds for the reason of my despair, and the cowardly act I had attempted to escape her father's wrath. Brettison, old friend, I make no excuses to you now; but was I not sorely tried? Surely, few men in our generation have stood in such a dilemma. Can you feel surprised that, stricken from my balance as a man--a sane and thoughtful man--I should have acted as I did, and dug for myself a pit of such purgatory as makes me feel now, as I sit here making my confession, how could I have gone through so terrible a crisis and yet be here alive, and able to think and speak like a suffering man." The silence in the room was terrible for what seemed an age before Brettison stretched out his trembling hand and took that of the man before him. "Hah!" Malcolm Stratton's low cry. It was that of a man who had long battled with the waves of a great storm, and who had at last found something to which he could cling. There was another long and painful pause before Stratton spoke again, and then he slowly withdrew his hand. "No," he said; "we must never clasp hands again. I must go on to the end a pariah among my kind." Brettison shook his head. "I have put myself in your place often," he said slowly, "and I have felt that I might have acted much the same." Stratton looked at him eagerly. "Yes; my great fault in you is that you should not have trusted me." There was again a long silence before Stratton spoke. "I felt that I was alone in the world to fight my own battle with all my strength," he said wearily. "And that strength was so much weakness, boy. Mine, weak as it is, has proved stronger far." Stratton looked at him wonderingly. "Yes; how much agony you might have been spared, perhaps, if you had come to me. But I don't know--I don't know. You acted as you thought best; I only did the same, and, not knowing all your thoughts, I fear that I have erred." Stratton sat thinking for a few moments, and then, raising his eyes: "I have told you all. It is your turn now." Brettison bowed his head. "Yes," he said, "it is better that I should speak and tell you."