o I wrote! [Leaps to his feet] What could
it be? Was it some kind of outside influence, a case of mental
suggestion, as they call it? But from whom could it come? I
was sleeping alone in that room. Could it possibly be my primitive
self--the savage to whom the keeping of faith is an unknown thing--
which pushed to the front while my consciousness was asleep--
together with the criminal will of that self, and its inability to
calculate the results of an action? Tell me, what do you think of
it?

MR. X. [As if he had to force the words out of himself] Frankly
speaking, your story does not convince me--there are gaps in it,
but these may depend on your failure to recall all the details--
and I have read something about criminal suggestion--or I think I
have, at least--hm! But all that is neither here nor there! You
have taken your medicine--and you have had the courage to
acknowledge your fault. Now we won't talk of it any more.

MR. Y. Yes, yes, yes, we must talk of it--till I become sure of my
innocence.

MR. X. Well, are you not?

MR. Y. No, I am not!

MR. X. That's just what bothers me, I tell you. It's exactly what
is bothering me!--Don't you feel fairly sure that every human
being hides a skeleton in his closet? Have we not, all of us,
stolen and lied as children? Undoubtedly! Well, now there are
persons who remain children all their lives, so that they cannot
control their unlawful desires. Then comes the opportunity, and
there you have your criminal.--But I cannot understand why you
don't feel innocent. If the child is not held responsible, why
should the criminal be regarded differently? It is the more
strange because--well, perhaps I may come to repent it later.
[Pause] I, for my part, have killed a man, and I have never
suffered any qualms on account of it.

MR. Y. [Very much interested] Have--you?

MR. X, Yes, I, and none else! Perhaps you don't care to shake
hands with a murderer?

MR. Y. [Pleasantly] Oh, what nonsense!

MR. X. Yes, but I have not been punished,

ME. Y. [Growing more familiar and taking on a superior tone] So
much the better for you!--How did you get out of it?

MR. X. There was nobody to accuse me, no suspicions, no witnesses.
This is the way it happened. One Christmas I was invited to hunt
with a fellow-student a little way out of Upsala. He sent a
besotted old coachman to meet me at the station, and this fellow
went to sleep on the box, drove the horses into a fence, and up