from himself. What he
had first thought to do was but in defense of his strict legal rights,
and if he had gone further--if he had done more, without daring to think
of it until it was done--then it was love that had led him astray. Was
it so cruel a thing to be just? So foul a thing to love?

But above the shufflings of remorse, above the stiflings of regret,
above the plea of a maddening love, was the voice of revenge speaking
loudly in his soul. That man, his instrument, now his master, Paul
Lowther, must be brought down, and his time-serving sponsor with him.
But how? There was but one way--by denouncing himself. Yes, that was the
sole outlet for his outraged and baffled spirit. He must go to the
proper quarter and say, "I have perjured myself, and sworn away my
brother's liberty. The man who was condemned as Paul Drayton is Paul
Ritson. I did it all."

That would bring this vulgar scoundrel to the dust, but at what a price!
The convict's dress now worn by his brother would soon be worn by him.
And what solace would it be then that the same suit would be worn by the
impostor also? Yet why prate of solace in a matter like this? What
alternative was left to him? In what quarter of the sky was the light
dawning for him? He was traveling toward the deepening night, and the
day of his life was done.

What if he allowed everything to take its course? Well, he was a
disgraced and ruined man, turned adrift from his father's house, and
doomed to see a stranger living there. Did he lack gall to make such a
climax bitter? Bitter, eh! and a thousand times the more bitter because
he himself had, for ends of his own, first placed the scoundrel where he
sat.

No, no, no; Paul Lowther must be brought down, and with him must fall
the poor ruins of a better man. Yes a better man, let the world say what
it would.

Could it occur that he would not be believed? that when he said "Take
me, I am a perjurer," they would answer, "No, your self-denunciation is
only a freak of revenge, a mad attempt to injure the relative who has
turned you out of his house?" Hugh Ritson laughed as the grim irony of
such a possible situation flashed upon him: a man self-condemned and
saved from punishment by the defense of his enemy!

There was a knock at his door. In his stupor he was not at first
conscious of what the knock meant. At length he recalled himself and
cried:

"Come in."

Gubblum Oglethorpe entered.

"The men on the twelve o'clock