until last night. When he knew it, he killed himself."

"Because--?" began Tom.

"Because he had loved and trusted me for half a lifetime--because I was
the one human creature to whom he had confided the tragedy of his
life--knowing he would be sure of comprehension and sympathy. It was to
me he poured forth the story of that poor child. You saw her die. She was
his sister. And I----"

Tom turned and looked at the face of the dead man and then, slowly, to
the face of the living one, who stood before him.

"You--were the man?" he said.

"Yes."

Tom turned to the dead man again. He put his big, warm hand with a
curiously suggestive movement--a movement somehow suggesting
protection--upon the stiff, clasped fingers.

"No, poor fellow!" he said, as if speaking to him. "You--no, no, there
was nothing but this--for you. God have mercy on us."

"No," said Baird, "there was nothing else for him. I know that.
Everything was whirled away. I had hours last night thinking there is
nothing else for me. Perhaps there is not. But first I shall take his
body back to his mother. I must tell her lies. This is the result of an
accident. That is what I shall tell her. She is a little old woman who
will not live long. I must take care of her--and let her talk to me about
her son who loved me--and her daughter."

He began to walk up and down the room.

"A man does not live--for fifteen years--side by side with another--that
other loving him wholly--and see the blackness of his own deed laid
bare--and hear again and again of the woe he has wrought--he does not
live so in peace."

"No," answered Tom.

"I tell you--" wildly--"I tell you there have been hours--as he has
talked to me of her--when the cold sweat has stood upon my flesh."

He came back to Tom. He was frantic with agonised restlessness.

"In all the cruelty of it," he cried, "there seems to have been one human
pitying soul. It was yours. You were tender to her in those last hours.
You were merciful--you held her hand when she died."

"Yes," said Tom, in a somewhat husky voice, since he remembered it so
well, "she was frightened. Her little hand was cold. I took it in mine
and told her not to be afraid."

Baird flung out his own hand with a movement of passionate feeling--then
let it fall at his side.

"We shall not meet again," he said, "you will not want to see me."

Big Tom gave him a long, steady look.

"Good Lord, man!" he said, after it, "am I the man t