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By Root 28105 0

—but only to say that however liberal or charitable his interpretation of the facts, as at last Clyde had truthfully pictured them, still he could not feel that either primarily or secondarily could he be absolved from guilt for her death. He had plotted—had he not? He had not gone to her rescue when he might have. He had wished her dead and afterwards had not been sorry. In the blow that had brought about the upsetting of the boat had been some anger. Also in the mood that had not permitted him to strike. The facts that he had been influenced by the beauty and position of Miss X to the plotting of this deed, and, after his evil relations with Roberta, that she had been determined he should marry her, far from being points in extenuation of his actions, were really further evidence of his general earthly sin and guilt. Before the Lord then he had sinned in many ways. In those dark days, alas, as Mr. McMillan saw it, he was little more than a compound of selfishness and unhallowed desire and fornication against the evil of which Paul had thundered. It had endured to the end and had not changed—until he had been taken by the law. He had not repented—not even there at Bear Lake where he had time for thought. And besides, had he not, from the beginning to end, bolstered it with false and evil pretenses? Verily.

On the other hand, no doubt if he were sent to the chair now in the face of his first—and yet so clear manifestation of contrition— when now, for the first time he was beginning to grasp the enormity of his offense—it would be but to compound crime with crime—the state in this instance being the aggressor. For, like the warden and many others, McMillan was against capital punishment— preferring to compel the wrong-doer to serve the state in some way. But, nonethe-less, he felt himself compelled to acknowledge, Clyde was far from innocent. Think as he would—and however much spiritually he desired to absolve him, was he not actually guilty?

In vain it was that McMillan now pointed out to Clyde that his awakened moral and spiritual understanding more perfectly and beautifully fitted him for life and action than ever before. He was alone. He had no one who believed in him. NO ONE. He had no one, whom, in any of his troubled and tortured actions before that crime saw anything but the darkest guilt apparently. And yet—and yet—(and this despite Sondra and the Reverend McMillan and all the world for that matter, Mason, the jury at Bridgeburg, the Court of Appeals at Albany, if it should decide to confirm the jury at Bridgeburg), he had a feeling in his heart that he was not as guilty as they all seemed to think. After all they had not been tortured as he had by Roberta with her determination that he marry her and thus ruin his whole life. They had not burned with that unquenchable passion for the Sondra of his beautiful dream as he had. They had not been harassed, tortured, mocked by the ill-fate of his early life and training, forced to sing and pray on the streets as he had in such a degrading way, when his whole heart and soul cried out for better things. How could they judge him, these people, all or any one of them, even his own mother, when they did not know what his own mental, physical and spiritual suffering had been? And as he lived through it again in his thoughts at this moment the sting and mental poison of it was as real to him as ever. Even in the face of all the facts and as much as every one felt him to be guilty, there was something so deep within him that seemed to cry out against it that, even now, at times, it startled him. Still—there was the Reverend McMillan—he was a very fair and just and merciful man. Surely he saw all this from a higher light and better viewpoint than his own. While at times he felt strongly that he was innocent, at others he felt that he must be guilty.

Oh, these evasive and tangled and torturesome thoughts!! Would he never be able—quite—to get the whole thing straightened out in his own mind?

So Clyde not being able to take advantage truly of either the tenderness and faith and devotion of so good and pure a soul as the Reverend McMillan or the all merciful and all powerful God of whom here he stood as the ambassador. What was he to do, really? How pray, resignedly, unreservedly, faithfully? And in that mood