Another hand raised that. No, do not look at the boy.
He is innocent! Look here! look here!'" And with one awful
gesture, he stood still,--while horror rose like a wave and
engulfed the room--choking back breath and speech from every
living soul there, and making a silence more awful than any sound-
-or so they all felt, till his voice rose again and they heard--
"You have trusted to appearances; you must trust now to my word. I
am the guilty man, not Scoville, and not Oliver, though Oliver may
have been in the ravine that night and even handled the bludgeon I
found at my feet in the recesses of Dark Hollow."
Then consternation spoke, and muttered cries were heard of
"Madness! It is not we who are needed here but a physician!" and
dominating all, the ringing shout:
"You cannot save me so, father. I hated Etheridge and I slew him.
Gentlemen," he prayed in his agony, coming close into their midst,
"do not be misled for a moment by a father's devotion."
His lifted head, his flashing eye, drew every look. Honour
confronted them in a countenance from which all reserve had melted
away. No guilt showed there; he stood among them, a heroic figure.
Slowly, and with a dread which no man might measure, the glances
which had just devoured his young but virile countenance passed to
that of the father. They did not leave it again. "Son?" With what
tenderness he spoke, but with what a ring of desolation. "I
understand your effort and appreciate it; but it is a useless one.
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