ed, and you
arrested. You drew your conclusions. Oh, they were natural enough.
But, before heaven, they were wrong!"

Saxon felt that, until he had learned the full story, he must remain
the actor. Accordingly, he allowed himself a skeptical laugh. Rodman,
stung by the implied disbelief, took up his argument again:

"You think I'm lying. It sounds too fishy! Of course, it was my
enterprise. It was a revolution of my making. You were called in as
the small lawyer calls in the great one. I concede all that. For me to
have sacrificed you would have been infamous, but I didn't do it. I
had been little seen in Puerto Frio. I was not well known. I had
arranged it all from the outside while you had been in the city. You
were less responsible, but more suspected. You remember how carefully
we planned--how we kept apart. You know that even you and I met only
twice, and that I never even saw your man, Williams."

Through the bitterness of conviction, a part of Saxon's brain seemed
to be looking on impersonally and marveling, almost with amusement, at
the remarkable position in which he found himself. Here stood a man
before him with a pistol pressed close to his chest, threatening
execution, denouncing, cursing, yet all the while giving evidence of
terror, almost pleading with his victim to believe his story! It was
the armed man who was frightened, who dreaded the act he declared he
was about to commit. And, as Saxon stood listening, it dawned upon
him, in the despair of the moment, that it was a matter of small
concern to himself whether or not the other fired. The story he had
heard had already done the injury. The bullet would be less cruel....
Rodman went on:

"I bent every effort to saving you, but Williams had confessed. He
was frightened. It was his first experience. He didn't know of my
connection with the thing. So help me God, that is the true version."

The story sickened Saxon, coming to him as it did in a form he could
no longer disbelieve. He raised his hands despairingly. At last, he
heard the other's voice again.

"When the scrap ended, and you were in power, I had gone. I was afraid
to come back. I knew what you would think, and then, after you left
the country, I couldn't find where you had gone."

"You may believe me or not," the painter said apathetically, "but I
have forgotten all that. I have no resentment, no wish for vengeance.
I had not even suspected you. I give you my word on that."

"Of cour