You cannot deceive these friends of ours--men who have known my
life. If you were in the ravine that night, so was I. If you
handled John Scoville's stick, so did I, AND AFTER YOU! Let us not
struggle for the execration of mankind; let it fall where it
rightfully belongs. It can bring no sting keener than that to
which my breast has long been subject. Or--" and here his tones
sank, in a last recognition of all he was losing forever, "if
there is suffering in a once proud man flinging from him the last
rag of respect with which he sought to cover the hideous nakedness
of an unsuspected crime, it is lost in the joy of doing justice to
the son who would take advantage of circumstances to assume his
father's guilt."
But Oliver, with a fire which nothing could damp, spoke up again:
"Gentlemen, will you see my father so degrade himself? He has
dwelt so continually upon the knowledge which separated us a dozen
years ago that he no longer can discriminate between the guilty
and the innocent. Would he have sat in court; would he have
uttered sentences; would he have kept his seat upon the bench for
all these years, if he had borne within his breast this secret of
personal guilt? No. It is not in human nature to play such a part.
I was guilty--and I fled. Let the act speak for itself. The
respect due my father must not be taken from him."
Confession and counter-confession! What were they to think!
Alanson Black, aghast at this dread dilemma, ran over in his mind
all that had led him to accept Oliver's guilt as proven, and then,
in immediate opposition to it, the details of that old trial and
the judge's consequent life; and, voicing the helpless confusion
of the others, observed with forced firmness:
"We have heard much of Oliver's wanderings in the ravine on that
fatal night, but nothing of yours, Judge Ostrander.
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