  The group in the judge's room was hushed in awestruck silence. The door was shut, but through the panels, from the court-room, came the murmur of many wondering voices. By the sofa on which lay the man who had made expiation stood the bishop and Harry Sanderson. Jessica knelt beside it, and the judge and those who stood with him in the background knew that the curtain was falling upon a strange and tangled drama of life and death. After the one long, sobbing cry of realization, throughout the excitement and confusion, Jessica had been strangely calm. She read the swift certainty in Doctor Brent's face, and she felt a painful thankfulness. The last appeal would not be to man's justice, but to God's mercy! The memories of the old blind days and the knowledge that this man—not the one to whom she had given her love at Smoky Mountain, at whom she dared not look—had then been her lover, rolled about her in a stinging mist. But as she knelt by the sofa the hand that Hugh's eyes were filming. That harrowing struggle of soul, that convulsive effort of the injured body, had demanded its price. The direful agony and its weakness had seized him—his stiffening fingers were slipping from the ledge of life, and he knew it. He heard the bishop's earnest voice speaking from the void: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends!" The words roused his fading senses, called them back to the outpost of feeling. "Not because I—loved," he said. "It—was because—I—was afraid!" False as his habit of life had been, in that moment only the bare truth remained. With a last effort the dying man thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out a small, battered, red disk, and laid it in the other's hand. He smiled. "Satan—" he whispered, as Harry bent over him, and the flicker of light fell in his eyes, "do you—think it will—count—when I cash in?" But Harry's answer Hugh did not hear. He had passed out of the sound of mortal speech for ever. |
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