to turn and
throw his weight into the proper scale!--that is a dream of the world as
it may become. This is the present earth,--earth of the tobacco-fields,
earth of the struggle, earth of the fight for standing-room! I have
fought--and I have fought--I cannot cease to fight."

With his foot he pushed back the burning wood. "I did not kill him in
self-defence. I killed him in anger. That is murder. Say, for argument,
that it is confessed murder. I will tell you, as a lawyer, what that
means. It means a full stop. Life stopped, work stopped, fame stopped--a
period black as ink, and never to be erased! A stop deep as the grave
and sharp as the hangman's drop, and the record that it closes empty,
vile, read at the best with horror and pity, read at the worst with a
glance aside at every man and woman whom the stained hand had ever
touched! That is what would come if I followed this appearance." He
struck the hand at which he looked against the mantel-shelf. "And if he
says, 'Ay, Lewis Rand, it is so that I would do,' I will answer, 'Yes!
being you!--but what, Ludwell Cary, had you lain in my cradle?" His face
worked and he turned from the mantel to the great chair. "Oh, _mother!_"
he said beneath his breath.

Jacqueline came and knelt beside him. "Lewis, Lewis, is it all so dark?"

He touched her hair with his fingers. "Dark! I feel as though I were in
a bare, light place. Underground, you know, but bare and flooded with
light. Well, Jacqueline, well--"

She clung to him without speech, and he went on. "There is enough to
create suspicion. We were travelling at the same hour, and it is known
that we were opponents. The crossroads where I slept last night--there
was nothing, I think, said at the inn. Then the forge, and the mill. At
the mill they will swear to telling me that he took the main road, and
since they could not see the ford, they must suppose that I, too, went
that way. The main road. There's the insistence. I kept to the main
road. As for Young Isham, I can manage him. That old Frenchman is more
difficult. Danger there--unless he holds his tongue. There's a witness
indeed lying at the bottom of some pool below the strand, but the strand
may sink into the sea before that witness is found! There is this and
there is that, but they'll serve no warrant on the this and that the
world can see. I have won more difficult cases."

"You propose," she cried, "to lie--and lie--and lie!"

After a moment he answered,