p had
seated him. "I don't know why I should come to you. I know you cannot
do anything. There is nothing for any one to do. But I had to tell
some one. I _had_ to say it to somebody."

"I sat that day in the courtroom," he went on as the Bishop waited,
"and thought that the whole world was against me. It seemed that
everybody was determined to make me guilty--even you, even Ruth. And I
was innocent. I had done nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the
idea that everybody was trying to make me out guilty, when I was
innocent. I had done nothing. I had not killed a man. I told the men
there on the mountain that I was innocent and they would not believe
me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts that I had not done the thing,
but you would not say a word for me, an innocent man."

"It was that as much as anything, that feeling that the whole world
wanted to condemn me knowing that I was innocent, that drove me on to
the wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting back, fighting back
against everybody.

"And--this is what I came to say--all the time I was guilty--guilty:
guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!"

"I am not sure I understand," said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffrey
stopped.

"Oh, there's nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guilty
of that man's death before I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty
of it that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am guilty now. I will
always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau could say a few words to you and turn
over into the next world, free. I cannot," he ended, with a sort of
grim finality as though he saw again before him that wall against
which he had come the night before.

"You mean--" the Bishop began slowly. Then he asked suddenly, "What
brought your mind to this view of the matter?"

"A girl," said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl that
loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me."

Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some
plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than
to treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not a boy to be
laughed out of a morbid notion, or to be told to grow older and forget
the thing. His was a man's soul, standing in the dark, grappling with
a thing with which it could not cope. The wrong word here might mar
his whole life. Here was no place for softening away the realities
with reasoning. The man's soul demanded a man's straight answer.

"Before you could be guilty," said the Bishop de