t was in the
fir-wood that Sydney Vane had been found murdered--it was in the
fir-wood that Hubert Lepel had first felt that his hand was red with his
cousin's blood.

He had not at first felt all the horror of his deed. He told himself
again and again that he had been justified in what he did. He had
punished a man for a base and craven act; he had challenged him and met
him in fair fight. By all the laws of honor he considered himself
justified. It was better that Marion Vane's heart should be broken by
her husband's death than by the news that he had deserted her. It was
better that Enid should think of her father as a saint and martyr, than
as a profligate whose hand no honest man or woman would care to hold.
Hubert Lepel sternly told himself that he had done good and not evil in
ridding the earth of a thoroughly bad man like Sydney Vane. If he might
have avowed the deed and its motive, he felt that he could almost have
gloried in it; but how to confess what he had done? At the first moment
of all he had refrained, in terrible fear of implicating Florence, not
knowing how far she would be mistress of herself; then, when he saw that
she was well able to defend her own reputation and that he might confess
the truth without bringing in her name at all--why, then he hesitated,
and found that his courage had deserted him. Florence entreated him to
conceal his act. He remembered that Sydney Vane had almost forced him to
use weapons--a course which Hubert himself would never have suggested;
and it was fatally easy to let things take their course. He hoped, in
his youthful ignorance of the laws of circumstantial evidence, that the
jury would bring in a verdict of suicide. When this hope was destroyed,
he still thought that the matter would be left a mystery--so many
mysteries were never cleared up at all! He did not think that any one
else could possibly be suspected. He was horrified when suspicion fell
upon Andrew Westwood, a poacher who had been vowing vengeance on Sydney
Vane for the past three months.

To the very end of the trial he hoped that Westwood would be acquitted.
When he had been condemned, Hubert vowed to himself that at any rate no
man should suffer death in his place. If no reprieve could be obtained,
no commutation of the sentence, he would speak out and set Andrew
Westwood free. The message of mercy came only just in time. He was on
the very point of delivering himself up to justice when news arrived
t