me, thinkin' I'd shoot. My reputation was agin me, there! You follow me?
You understand what I mean?"

Kneeling beside him now and grasping both his hands, the changed and
horror-stricken Wayne gasped, "But"--

"Hold on! I jumped off the Sacramento boat--I was goin' down the third
time--they thought on the boat I was gone--they think so now! But a
passin' fisherman dived for me. I grappled him--he was clear grit and
would have gone down with me, but I couldn't let him die too--havin' so
to speak no cause. You follow me--you understand me? I let him save me.
But it was all the same, for when I got to 'Frisco I read as how I was
drowned. And then I reckoned it was all right, and I wandered HERE,
where I wasn't known--until I saw you."

"But why should you want to die?" said Wayne, almost fiercely. "What
right have you to die while others--double-dyed and blood-stained, are
condemned to live, 'testify,' and suffer?"

The dying man feebly waved a deprecation with his maimed hand, and even
smiled faintly. "I knew you'd say that. I knew what you'd think about
it, but it's all the same now. I did it for you and Safie! I knew I was
in the way; I knew you was the man she orter had; I knew you was the man
who had dragged her outer the mire and clay where I was leavin' her, as
you did when she fell in the water. I knew that every day I lived I was
makin' YOU suffer and breakin' HER heart--for all she tried to be gentle
and gay."

"Great God in heaven! Will you stop!" said Wayne, springing to his feet
in agony. A frightened look--the first that any one had ever seen in