they were gone from under the patient's pillow--vanished away.
The patient said:

"Let the pillow alone; what do you want?"

"We thought it best that the cheques--"

"You will never see them again--they are destroyed. They came from
Satan. I saw the hell-brand on them, and I knew they were sent to betray
me to sin." Then he fell to gabbling strange and dreadful things which
were not clearly understandable, and which the doctor admonished them to
keep to themselves.

Richards was right; the cheques were never seen again.

A nurse must have talked in her sleep, for within two days the forbidden
gabblings were the property of the town; and they were of a surprising
sort. They seemed to indicate that Richards had been a claimant for
the sack himself, and that Burgess had concealed that fact and then
maliciously betrayed it.

Burgess was taxed with this and stoutly denied it. And he said it was
not fair to attach weight to the chatter of a sick old man who was out
of his mind. Still, suspicion was in the air, and there was much talk.

After a day or two it was reported that Mrs. Richards's delirious
deliveries were getting to be duplicates of her husband's. Suspicion
flamed up into conviction, now, and the town's pride in the purity of
its one undiscredited important citizen began to dim down and flicker
toward extinction.

Six days passed, then came more news. The old couple were dying.
Richards's mind cleared in his latest hour, and he sent for Burgess.
Burgess said:

"Let the room be cleared. I think he wishes to say something in
privacy."

"No!" said Richards; "I want witnesses. I want you all to hear
my confession, so that I may die a man, and not a dog. I was
clean--artificially--like the rest; and like the rest I fell when
temptation came. I signed a lie, and claimed the miserable sack. Mr.
Burgess remembered that I had done him a service, and in gratitude (and
ignorance) he suppressed my claim and saved me. You know the thing that
was charged against Burgess years ago. My testimony, and mine alone,
could have cleared him, and I was a coward and left him to suffer
disgrace--"

"No--no--Mr. Richards, you--"

"My servant betrayed my secret to him--"

"No one has betrayed anything to me--" "--And then he did a natural and
justifiable thing; he repented of the saving kindness which he had done
me, and he EXPOSED me--as I deserved--"

"Never!--I make oath--"

"Out of my heart I forgive him."

Burges