ould I blame Cardigan? _Mon pere_--_mon pere_--listen to me. I can say it
now, because I've got a right to say it. _I lied_. I didn't kill John
Barkley!"

A strange cry fell from Father Layonne's lips. It was a choking cry, a
cry, not of rejoicing, but of a grief-stung thing. "Jimmy!"

"I swear it! Great heaven, _mon pere_, don't you believe me?"

The missioner had risen. In his eyes and face was another look. It was
as if in all his life he had never seen James Kent before. It was a
look born suddenly of shock, the shock of amazement, of incredulity, of
a new kind of horror. Then swiftly again his countenance changed, and
he put a hand on Kent's head.

"God forgive you, Jimmy," he said. "And God help you, too!"

Where a moment before Kent had felt the hot throb of an inundating joy,
his heart was chilled now by the thing he sensed in Father Layonne's
voice and saw in his face and eyes. It was not entirely disbelief. It
was a more hopeless thing than that.

"You do not believe me!" he said.

"It is my religion to believe, Jimmy," replied Father Layonne in a
gentle voice into which the old calmness had returned. "I must believe,
for your sake. But it is not a matter of human sentiment now, lad. It
is the Law! Whatever my heart feels toward you can do you no good. You
are--" He hesitated to speak the words.

Then it was that Kent saw fully and clearly the whole monstrous
situation. It had taken time for it to fasten itself upon him. In a
general way it had been clear to him a few moments before; now, detail
by detail, it closed in upon him, and his muscles tightened, and Father
Layonne saw his jaw set hard and his hands clench. Death was gone. But
the mockery of it, the grim exultation of the thing over the colossal
trick it had played, seemed to din an infernal laughter in his ears.
But--he was going to live! That was the one fact that rose above all
others. No matter what happened to him a month or six months from now,
he was not going to die today. He would live to receive Mercer's
report. He would live to stand on his feet again and to fight for the
life which he had thrown away. He was, above everything else, a
fighting man. It was born in him to fight, not so much against his
fellow men as against the overwhelming odds of adventure as they came
to him. And now he was up against the deadliest game of all. He saw it.
He felt it. The thing gripped him. In the eyes of that Law of which he
had so recently been a