Dark Hollow

by Anna Katharine Green

  XXXIV

  DARK HOLLOW

  Later, when the boards he had loosened in anticipation of this hour wereall removed, they came upon a packet of closely written words hidden inthe framework of the bed.

  It read as follows:

  * * * * *

  Whosoever lays hands on this MS. will already be acquainted with mycrime. If he would also know its cause and the full story of myhypocrisy, let him read these lines written, as it were, with my heart'sblood.

  I loved Algernon Etheridge; I shall never have a dearer friend. His oddways, his lank, possibly ungainly figure crowned by a head of scholarlyrefinement, his amiability when pleased, his irascibility when crossed,formed a character attractive to me from its very contradictions; andafter my wife's death and before my son Oliver reached a companionableage, it was in my intercourse with this man I found my most solidsatisfaction.

  Yet we often quarrelled. His dogmatism frequently ran counter to myviews, and, being myself a man of quick and violent temper, hard wordssometimes passed between us, to be forgotten the next minute in ahand-shake, or some other token of mutual esteem. These dissensions--ifsuch they could be called--never took place except in the privacy of hisstudy or mine. We thought too much of each other to display ourdifferences of opinion abroad or even in the presence of Oliver; andhowever heated our arguments or whatever our topic we invariably partedfriends, till one fateful night.

  O God! that years of repentance, self-hatred and secret immolation cannever undo the deed of an infuriated moment. Eternity may console, butit can never make me innocent of the blood of my heart's brother.

  We had had our usual wordy disagreement over some petty subject in whichhe was no nearer wrong nor I any nearer right than we had been manytimes before; but for some reason I found it harder to pardon him.Perhaps some purely physical cause lay back of this; perhaps the nervousirritation incident upon a decision then pending in regard to Oliver'sfuture, heightened my feelings and made me less reasonable than usual.The cause does not matter, the result does. For the first time in ourlong acquaintance, I let Algernon Etheridge leave me, without anyattempt at conciliation.

  If only I had halted there! If, at sight of my empty study, I had notconceived the mad notion of waylaying him at the bridge for thehand-shake I missed, I might have been a happy man now, and Oliver--Butwhy dwell upon these might-have-beens! What happened was this:

  Disturbed in mind, and finding myself alone in the house, Oliver havingevidently gone out while we two were disputing, I decided to follow outthe impulse I have mentioned. Leaving by the rear, I went down the laneto the path which serves as a short cut to the bridge. That I did thisunseen by anybody is not so strange when you consider the hour, and howthe only person then living in the lane was, in all probability, in herkitchen. It would have been better for me, little as I might haverecognised it at the time, had she been where she could have witnessedboth my going and coming and faced me with the fact.

  John Scoville, in his statement, says that after giving up his searchfor his little girl, he wandered up the ravine before taking the pathback which led him through Dark Hollow. This was false, as well as thestory he told of leaving his stick by the chestnut tree in the gully atfoot of Ostrander Lane. For I was on the spot, and I know the route bywhich he reached Dark Hollow and also through whose agency the stickcame to be there.

  Read, and learn with what tricks the devil beguiles us men.

  I was descending this path, heavily shadowed, as you know, by a skirtingof closely growing trees and bushes, when just where it dips into theHollow, I heard the sound of a hasty foot come crashing up through theunderbrush from the ravine and cross the path ahead of me. A turn in thepath prevented me from seeing the man himself, but as you will perceiveand as I perceived later when circumstances recalled it to my mind, Ihad no need to see him to know who it was or with what intent he tookthis method of escape from the ravine into the fields leading to thehighway. Scoville's stick spoke for him, the stick which I presentlytripped over and mechanically picked up, without a thought of thedesperate use to which I was destined to put it.

  Etheridge was coming. I could hear his whistle on Factory Road. Therewas no mistaking it. It was an unusually shrill one and had always beena cause of irritation to me, but at this moment it was more; it rousedevery antagonistic impulse within me. He whistling like a galliard,after a parting which had dissatisfied me to such an extent that I hadcome all this distance to ask his pardon and see his old smile again!Afterwards, long afterwards, I was able to give another interpretationto his show of apparent self-satisfaction, but then I saw nothing butthe contrast it offered to my own tender regrets, and my blood began toboil and my temper rise to such a point that recrimination took theplace of apology when in another moment we came together in the openspace between the end of the bridge and Dark Hollow.

  He was in no better mood than myself to encounter insult, and what hadbeen a simple difference between us flamed into a quarrel which reachedits culmination when he mentioned Oliver's name with a taunt, which theboy, for all his obstinate clinging to his journalistic idea, did notdeserve.

  Knowing my own temper, I drew back into the Hollow.

  He followed me.

  I tried to speak.

  He took the word out of my mouth. This may have been with the intent ofquelling my anger, but the tone was rasping, and noting this and not hiswords, my hand tightened insensibly about the stick which the devil (orJohn Scoville) had put in my hand. Did he see this, or was he promptedby some old memory of boyish quarrels that he should give utterance tothat quick, sharp laugh of scorn! I shall never know, but ere the soundhad ceased, the stick was whirling over my head--there came a crash andhe fell. My friend! My friend!

  Next moment the earth seemed too narrow, the heavens too contracted formy misery. That he was dead--that my blow had killed him, I neverdoubted for an instant. I knew it, as we know the face of Doom when onceit has risen upon us. Never, never again would this lump of clay, whicha few minutes before had filled the Hollow with shrillest whistling,breathe or think or speak. He was dead, DEAD, DEAD!--And I? What was I?

  The name which no man hears unmoved, no amount of repetition makes easyto the tongue or welcome to the ear!... the name which I had heardlaunched in full forensic eloquence so many times in accusation againstthe wretches I had hardly regarded as being in the same human class asmyself, rang in my ear as though intoned from the very mouth of hell. Icould not escape it. I should never be able to escape it again. Though Iwas standing in a familiar scene--a scene I had known and frequentedfrom childhood, I felt myself as isolated from my past and as completelyset apart from my fellows as the shipwrecked mariner tossed toprecarious foot-hold on his wave-dashed rock. I forgot that othercriminals existed. In that one awful moment I was in my own eyes theonly blot upon the universe--the sole inhabitant of the new world intowhich I had plunged--the world of crime--the world upon which I had satin judgment before I knew--

  What broke the spell? A noise? No, I heard no noise. The sense of somepresence near, if not intrusive? God knows; all I can say is that,drawn, by some other will than my own, I found my glance travelling upthe opposing bluff till at its top, framed between the ragged wall andtowering chimney of Spencer's Folly, I saw the presence I had dreaded,the witness who was to undo me.

  It was a woman--a woman with a little child in hand. I did not see herface, for she was just on the point of turning away from the dizzyverge, but nothing could have been plainer than the silhouette whichthese two made against the flush of that early evening sky. I see it yetin troubled dreams and desperate musings. I shall see it always; forhard upon its view, fear entered my soul, horrible, belittling fear,torturing me not with a sense of guilt but of its consequences. I hadslain a man to my hurt, I a judge, just off the Bench; and soon ...possibly before I should see Oliver again ... I should be branded fromend to end of the town with that name which had made such havoc in mymind when I first saw Algernon E
theridge lying stark before me.

  I longed to cry out--to voice my despair in the spot where my sin hadfound me out; but my throat had closed, and the blood in my veins ceasedflowing. As long as I could catch a glimpse of this woman's flutteringskirt as she retreated through the ruins, I stood there, self-convicted,above the man I had slain, staring up at that blotch of shining skywhich was as the gate of hell to me. Not till their two figures haddisappeared and it was quite clear again did the instinct ofself-preservation return, and with it the thought of flight.

  But where could I fly? No spot in the wide world was secret enough toconceal me now. I was a marked man. Better to stand my ground, and takethe consequences, than to act the coward's part and slink away likethose other men of blood I had so often sat in judgment upon.

  Had I but followed this impulse! Had I but gone among my fellows, shownthem the mark of Cain upon my forehead, and prayed, not for indulgence,but punishment, what days of gnawing misery I should have been spared!

  But the horror of what lay at my feet drove me from the Hollow and droveme the wrong way. As my steps fell mechanically into the trail downwhich I had come in innocence and kindly purpose only a few minutesbefore, a startling thought shot through my benumbed mind. The woman hadshown no haste in her turning! There had been a naturalness in hermovement, a dignity and a grace which spoke of ease, not shock. What ifshe had not seen! What if my deed was as yet unknown! Might I not havetime for--for what? I did not stop to think; I just pressed on, sayingto myself, "Let Providence decide. If I meet any one before I reach myown door, my doom is settled. If I do not--"

  And I did not. As I turned into the lane from the ravine I heard a soundfar down the slope, but it was too distant to create apprehension, and Iwent calmly on, forcing myself into my usual leisurely gait, if only togain some control over my own emotions before coming under Oliver's eye.

  That sound I have never understood. It could not have been Scovillesince in the short time which had passed, he could not have fled fromthe point where I heard him last into the ravine below Ostrander Lane.But if not he, who was it? Or if it was he, and some other hand threwhis stick across my path, whose was this hand and why have we neverheard anything about it? It is a question which sometimes floats throughmy mind, but I did not give it a thought then. I was within sight ofhome and Oliver's possible presence; and all other dread was as nothingin comparison to what I felt at the prospect of meeting my boy's eye. Myboy's eye! my greatest dread then, and my greatest dread still! In myterror of it I walked as to my doom.

  The house which I had left empty, I found empty; Oliver had not yetreturned. The absolute stillness of the rooms seemed appalling.Instinctively, I looked up at the clock. It had stopped. Not at theminute--I do not say it was at the minute--but near, very near the timewhen from an innocent man I became a guilty one. Appalled at thediscovery, I fled to the front. Opening the door, I looked out. Not acreature in sight, and not a sound to be heard. The road was as lonelyand seemingly as forsaken as the house. Had time stopped here too? Werethe world and its interests at a pause in horror of my deed? For amoment I believed it; then more natural sensations intervened and,rejoicing at this lack of disturbance where disturbance meant discovery,I stepped inside again and went and sat down in my own room.

  My own room! Was it mine any longer? Its walls looked strange; the pettyobjects of my daily handling, unfamiliar. The change in myself infectedeverything I saw. I might have been in another man's house for allconnection these things seemed to have with me or my life. Like one setapart on an unapproachable shore, I stretched hands in vain towards allthat I had known and all that had been of value to me.

  But as the minutes passed, as the hands of the clock I had hastilyrewound moved slowly round the dial, I began to lose this feeling. Hopewhich I thought quite dead slowly revived. Nothing had happened, andperhaps nothing would. Men had been killed before, and the slayer passedunrecognised. Why might it not be so in my case? If the woman continuedto remain silent; if for any reason she had not witnessed the blow orthe striker, who else was there to connect me with an assault committeda quarter of a mile away? No one knew of the quarrel; and if they did,who could be so daring as to associate one of my name with an action sobrutal? A judge slay his friend! It would take evidence of a very markedcharacter to make even my political enemies believe that.

  As the twilight deepened I rose from my seat and lit the gas. I must notbe found skulking in the dark. Then I began to count the ticks measuringoff the hour. If thirty minutes more passed without a rush from without,I might hope. If twenty?--if ten?--then it was five! then it was--Ah, atlast! The gate had clanged to. They were coming. I could hearsteps--voices--a loud ring at the bell. Laying down the pen I had taken,up mechanically, I moved slowly towards the front. Should I light thehall gas as I went by? It was a natural action, and, being natural,would show unconcern. But I feared the betrayal which my ashy face andtrembling hands might make. Agitation after the news was to be expected,but not before! So I left the hall dark when I opened the door.

  And thus decided my future.

  For in the faces of the small crowd which blocked the doorway, Idetected nothing but commiseration; and when a voice spoke and I heardOliver's accents surcharged with nothing more grievous than pity, Irealised that my secret was as yet unshared, and seeing that no mansuspected me, I forebore to declare my guilt to any one.

  This sudden restoration from soundless depths into the pure air ofrespect and sympathy confused me; and beyond the words KILLED! STRUCKDOWN BY THE BRIDGE! I heard little, till slowly, dully like the call ofa bell issuing from a smothering mist, I caught the sound of a name andthen the words, "He did it just for the watch;" which hardly conveyedmeaning to me, so full was I of Oliver's look and Oliver's tone and theway his arm supported me as he chided them for their abruptness andendeavoured to lead me away.

  But the name! It stuck in my ear and gradually it dawned upon myconsciousness that another man had been arrested for my crime and thatthe safety, the reverence and the commiseration that were so dear to mehad been bought at a price no man of honour might pay.

  But I was no longer a man of honour. I was a wretched criminal swayingabove a gulf of infamy in which I had seen others swallowed but hadnever dreamed of being engulfed myself. I never thought of lettingmyself go--not at this crisis--not while my heart was warm with itsresurgence into the old life.

  And so I let pass this second opportunity for confession. Afterwards, itwas too late--or seemed too late to my demoralised judgment.

  My first real awakening to the extraordinary horrors of my position waswhen I realised that circumstances were likely to force me intopresiding over the trial of the man Scoville. This I felt to be beyondeven my rapidly hardening conscience. I made great efforts to evade it,but they all failed. Then I feigned sickness, only to realise that myplace would be taken by Judge Grosvenor, a notoriously prejudiced man.If he sat, it would go hard with the prisoner, and I wanted the prisoneracquitted. I had no grudge against John Scoville. I was grateful to him.By his own confession he was a thief, but he was no murderer, and hisbad repute had stood me in good stead. Attention had been so drawn tohim by the circumstances in which the devil had entangled him, that ithad never even glanced my way and now never would. Of course, I wantedto save him, and if the only help I could now give him was to sit asjudge upon his case, then would I sit as judge whatever mental tortureit involved.

  Sending for Mr. Black, I asked him point-blank whether in face of thecircumstance that the victim of this murder was my best friend, he wouldnot prefer to plead his case before Judge Grosvenor. He answered no:that he had more confidence in my equity even under these circumstancesthan in that of my able, but headstrong, colleague; and prayed me to getwell. He did not say that he expected me on this very account to showeven more favour towards his client than I might otherwise have done,but I am sure that he meant it; and, taking his attitude as an omen, Iobeyed his injunction and was soon well enough to take my seat upon theBench
.

  No one will expect me to enlarge upon the sufferings of that time. Bysome I was thought stoical; by others, a prey to such grief that only myduty as judge kept me to my task. Neither opinion was true. What men sawfacing them from the Bench was an automaton wound up to do so much workeach day. The real Ostrander was not there, but stood, an unseenpresence at the bar, undergoing trial side by side with John Scoville,for a crime to make angels weep and humanity hide its head: hypocrisy!

  But the days went by and the inexorable hour drew nigh for the accusedman's release or condemnation. Circumstances were against him--so washis bearing which I alone understood. If, as all felt, it was that of aguilty man, it was so because he had been guilty in intent if not infact. He had meant to attack Etheridge. He had run down the ravine forthat purpose, knowing my old friend's whistle and envying him his watch.Or why his foolish story of having left his stick behind him at thechestnut? But the sound of my approaching steps higher up on the pathhad stopped him in mid-career and sent him rushing up the slope ahead ofme. When he came back after a short circuit of the fields beyond, it wasto find his crime forestalled and by the very weapon he had thrown intothe Hollow as he went skurrying by. It was the shock of this discovery,heightened by the use he made of it to secure the booty thus thrown inhis way without crime, which gave him the hang-dog look we all noted.That there were other reasons--that the place recalled another scene ofbrutality in which intention had been followed by act, I did not thenknow. It was sufficient to me then that my safety was secured by his ownguilty consciousness and the prevarications into which it led him.Instead of owning up to the encounter he had so barely escaped, heconfined himself to the simple declaration of having heard voicessomewhere near the bridge, which to all who know the ravine appearedimpossible under the conditions named.

  Yet, for all these incongruities and the failure of his counsel toproduce any definite impression by the prisoner's persistent denial ofhaving whittled the stick or even of having carried it into Dark Hollow,I expected a verdict in his favour. Indeed, I was so confident of itthat I suffered less during the absence of the jury than at any othertime, and when they returned, with that air of solemn decision whichproclaims unanimity of mind and a ready verdict, I was so prepared forhis acquittal that for the first time since the opening of the trial, Ifelt myself a being of flesh and blood, with human sentiments and hopes.And it was:

  "Guilty!"

  When I woke to a full realisation of what this entailed (for I must havelost consciousness for a minute, though no one seemed to notice), theone fact staring me in the face--staring as a live thing stares--wasthat it would devolve upon me to pronounce his sentence; upon me,Archibald Ostrander, an automaton no longer, but a man realising to thefull his part in this miscarriage of justice.

  Somehow, strange as it may appear, I had thought little of thispossibility previous to this moment. I found myself upon the brink ofthis new gulf before the dizziness of my escape from the other had fullypassed. Do you wonder that I recoiled, sought to gain time, put offdelivering the sentence from day to day? I had sinned,--sinnedirredeemably--but there are depths of infamy beyond which a man cannotgo. I had reached that point. Chaos confronted me, and in contemplationof it, I fell ill.

  What saved me? A new discovery, and the loving sympathy of my sonOliver. One night--a momentous one to me--he came to my room and,closing the door behind him, stood with his back to it, contemplating mein a way that startled me.

  What had happened? What lay behind this new and penetrating look, thisanxious and yet persistent manner? I dared not think. I dared not yieldto the terror which must follow thought. Terror blanches the cheek andmy cheek must never blanch under anybody's scrutiny. Never, never, solong as I lived.

  "Father,"--the tone quieted me, for I knew from its gentleness that hewas hesitating to speak more on his own account than on mine--"you arenot looking well; this thing worries you. I hate to see you like this.Is it just the loss of your old friend, or--or--"

  He faltered, not knowing how to proceed. There was nothing strange inthis. There could not have been much encouragement in my expression. Iwas holding on to myself with much too convulsive a grasp.

  "Sometimes I think," he recommenced, "that you don't feel quite sure ofthis man Scoville's guilt. Is that so? Tell me, father."

  I did not know what to make of him. There was no shrinking from me; noconscious or unconscious accusation in voice or look, but there was adesire to know, and a certain latent resolve behind it all that markedthe line between obedient boyhood and thinking, determining man. Withall my dread--a dread so great I felt the first grasp of age upon myheart-strings at that moment--I recognised no other course than to meetthis inquiry of his with the truth--that is, with just so much of thetruth as was needed. No more, not one jot more. I, therefore, answered,and with a show of self-possession at which I now wonder:

  "You are not far from right, Oliver. I have had moments of doubt. Theevidence, as you must have noticed, is purely circumstantial."

  "But a jury has convicted him."

  "Yes."

  "On the evidence you mention?"

  "Yes."

  "What evidence would satisfy YOU? What would YOU consider a conclusiveproof of guilt?"

  I told him in the set phrases of my profession.

  "Then," he declared as I finished, "you may rest easy as to this man'sright to receive a sentence of death."

  I could not trust my ears.

  "I know from personal observation," he proceeded, approaching me with afirm step, "that he is not only capable of the crime for which he hasbeen convicted, but that he has actually committed one under similarcircumstances, and possibly for the same end."

  And he told me the story of that night of storm and bloodshed,--a storywhich will be found lying near this, in my alcove of shame andcontrition.

  It had an overwhelming effect upon me. I had been very near death.Suicide must have ended the struggle in which I was engaged, had notthis knowledge of actual and unpunished crime come to ease myconscience. John Scoville was worthy of death, and, being so, shouldreceive the full reward of his deed. I need hesitate no longer.

  That night I slept.

  But there came a night when I did not. After the penalty had been paidand to most men's eyes that episode was over, I turned the first page ofthat volume of slow retribution which is the doom of the man who sinsfrom impulse, and has the recoil of his own nature to face relentlesslyto the end of his days.

  Scoville was in his grave.

  I was alive.

  Scoville had shot a man for his money.

  I had struck a man down in my wrath.

  Scoville's widow and little child must face a cold and unsympatheticworld, with small means and disgrace rising, like a wall, between themand social sympathy, if not between them and the actual means of living.

  Oliver's future faced him untouched. No shadow lay across his path tohinder his happiness or to mar his chances.

  The results were unequal. I began to see them so, and feel the gnawingof that deathless worm whose ravages lay waste the breast, while handand brain fulfil their routine of work, as though all were well and thefoundations of life unshaken.

  I suffered as only cowards suffer. I held on to honour; I held on tohome; I held on to Oliver, but with misery for my companion and aself-contempt which nothing could abate. Each time I mounted the Bench,I felt a tug at my arm as of a visible, restraining presence. Each timeI returned to my home and met the clear eye of Oliver beaming upon mewith its ever growing promise of future comradeship, I experienced arebellion against my own happiness which opened my eyes to my own natureand its inevitable demand. I must give up Oliver; or yield my honours,make a full confession and accept whatever consequences it might bring.I am a proud man, and the latter alternative was beyond me. With eachpassing day, the certainty of this became more absolute and more fixed.In every man's nature there lurk possibilities of action which he onlyrecognises under stress, also impossibilities which stretch
like an ironbarrier between him and the excellence he craves. I had come up againstsuch an impossibility. I could forego pleasure, travel, socialintercourse, and even the companionship of the one being in whom all myhopes centred, but I could not, of my own volition, pass from thejudge's bench to the felon's cell. There I struck the immovable,--theimpassable.

  I decided in one awful night of renunciation that I would send Oliverout of my life.

  The next day I told him abruptly ... hurting him to spare myself ...that I had decided after long and mature thought to yield to his desirefor journalism, and that I would start him in his career and maintainhim in it for three years if he would subscribe to the followingconditions:

  They were the hardest a loving father ever imposed upon a dutiful andloving son.

  First: he was to leave home immediately ... within a few hours, in fact.

  Secondly: he was to regard all relations between us as finished; we wereto be strangers henceforth in every particular save that of the moneyobligation already mentioned.

  Thirdly: he was never to acknowledge this compact, or to cast any slurupon the father whose reasons for this apparently unnatural conduct werequite disconnected with any fault of his or any desire to punish orreprove.

  Fourthly: he was to pray for his father every night of his life beforehe slept.

  Was this last a confession? Had I meant it to be such? If so, it missedits point. It awed but did not enlighten him. I had to contend with hiscompunctions, as well as with his grief and dismay. It was an hour ofstruggle on his part and of implacable resolution on mine. Nothing butsuch hardness on my part would have served me. Had I faltered once hewould have won me over, and the tale of my sleepless nights beenrepeated. I did not falter; and when the midnight stroke rang throughthe house that night, it separated by its peal, a sin-beclouded buthuman past from a future arid with solitude and bereft of the onepossession to retain which my sin had been hidden.

  I was a father without a son--as lonely and as desolate as though theseparation between us were that of the grave I had merited and so weaklyshunned.

  And thus I lived for a year.

  But I was not yet satisfied.

  The toll I had paid to Grief did not seem to me a sufficient punishmentfor a crime which entailed imprisonment if not death. How could I insurefor myself the extreme punishment which my peace demanded, withoutbringing down upon me the full consequences I refused to accept.

  You have seen to-day how I ultimately answered this question. Aconvict's bed! a convict's isolation.

  Bela served me in this; Bela who knew my secret and knowing continued tolove me. He gathered up these rods singly and in distant places and setthem up across the alcove in my room. He had been a convict oncehimself.

  Being now in my rightful place, I could sleep again.

  But after some weeks of this, fresh fears arose. An accident waspossible. For all Bela's precautions, some one might gain access to thisroom. This would mean the discovery of my secret. Some new method mustbe devised for securing me absolutely against intrusion. Entrance intomy simple, almost unguarded cottage must be made impossible. A closefence should replace the pickets now surrounding it--a fence with a gatehaving its own lock.

  And this fence was built.

  This should have been enough. But guilt has terrors unknown toinnocence. One day I caught a small boy peering through an infinitesimalcrack in the fence, and, remembering the window grilled with iron withwhich Bela had replaced the cheerful casement in my den of punishment, Irealised how easily an opening might be made between the boards for theconvenience of a curious eye anxious to penetrate the mystery of myseclusion.

  And so it came about that the inner fence was put up.

  This settled my position in the town. No more visits. All social lifewas over.

  It was meet. I was satisfied at last. I could now give my whole mind tomy one remaining duty. I lived only while on the Bench.

  March Fifth, 1898.

  There is a dream which comes to me often: a vision which I often see.

  It is that of two broken and irregular walls standing apart against a background of roseate sky. Between these walls the figures of a woman and child, turning about to go.

  The bridge I never see, nor the face of the man who died for my sin; but this I see always: the gaunt ruins of Spencer's Folly and the figure of a woman leading away a little child.

  That woman lives. I know now who she is. Her testimony was uttered before me in court, and was not one to rouse my apprehensions. My crime was unwitnessed by her, and for years she has been a stranger to this town. But I have a superstitious horror of seeing her again, while believing that the day will come when I shall do so. When this occurs,--when I look up and find her in my path, I shall know that my sin has found me out and that the end is near.

  1909

  O shade of Algernon Etheridge, unforgetting and unforgiving! The woman has appeared! She stood in this room to-day. Verily, years are nothing with God.

  Added later.

  I thought I knew what awaited me if my hour ever came. But who can understand the ways of Providence or where the finger of retributive Justice will point. It is Oliver's name and not mine which has become the sport of calumny. Oliver's! Could the irony of life go further! OLIVER'S!

  There is nothing against him, and such folly must soon die out; but to see doubt in Mrs. Scoville's eyes is horrible in itself and to eliminate it I may have to show her Oliver's account of that long-forgotten night of crime in Spencer's Folly. It is naively written and reveals a clean, if reticent, nature; but that its effect may be unquestionable I will insert a few lines to cover any possible misinterpretation of his manner or conduct. There is an open space, and our handwritings were always strangely alike. Only our e's differed, and I will be careful with the e's.

  HER confidence must be restored at all hazards.

  My last foolish attempt has undone me. Nothing remains now but thatsacrifice of self which should have been made twelve years ago.