"For years I tried to forget. I could not. My sin followed me day and night, and poisoned every moment of my existence. At last I made up my mind to go back to the old place and give myself up, and make amends for what I had done. I left my wife and child here, and worked my passage back to England. I was too late. Justice had been done so far as human law could do it. The real criminals had been found, and he I had wronged was free. And he had gone to America. I knew what for. He was slow to anger, but, when once aroused, his anger was terrible. I knew that he was seeking me, and I knew that he would find me. From that time I never lay down to sleep but my last thought was, 'It may be to-morrow!' I never rose in the morning that I did not say to myself, 'Perhaps it may be to-day!' For years I have lived with this spectre of vengeance at my elbow. What my life has been since I came among you, you think you know. What it really has been, no mortal man can guess. At last, what was to be came to pass. He found me."
A shudder shook the speaker, and he was silent an instant. Then he continued:
"He found me. I have read in his own hand-writing _how_ he found me, and all the history of his ruined life. He has stood at my window with my life in his hands, and at the last moment--God alone knows why, perhaps for the sake of the woman he loved and her child--he has spared my life. I have seen the print of his feet where he must have stood outside in the bitter cold looking in upon my warmth and comfort. I have found the very weapon with which he would have taken my life lying at my door where he must have flung it, and I have traced his steps where he must have fled across the field to hide himself in the darkness, only to die almost within a stone's-throw of this house. He had sworn to meet me face to face, and it was to be--like this! The hand of God was in it. I might have kept silent. The secret was in my hands alone. No human law could reach me now that his tongue is silent; but lying there, as he lay yesterday, dead, in rags, he has spoken as no living man could speak! He has accused and convicted and sentenced me, as no human law could have done!"
He ceased as abruptly as he had began. He stood there, broken, self-accused, in a humiliation so deep, a despair so utter, that the sternest of his listeners was moved to a compassion which fought desperately with the horror his story had inspired. Involuntarily, unconsciously, those nearest him had shrunk away until he stood apart, alone, at the foot of the coffin, from which the dead, half-opened eyes seem to hold him in a stony, unrelenting stare.