want this thing known? Why do you want to put your head into the
noose?"

Granice looked at him hopelessly, trying to take the measure of his
quick light irreverent mind. No one so full of a cheerful animal
life would believe in the craving for death as a sufficient motive;
and Granice racked his brain for one more convincing. But suddenly
he saw the reporter's face soften, and melt to a naive
sentimentalism.

"Mr. Granice--has the memory of it always haunted you?"

Granice stared a moment, and then leapt at the opening. "That's
it--the memory of it ... always ..."

McCarren nodded vehemently. "Dogged your steps, eh? Wouldn't let you
sleep? The time came when you _had_ to make a clean breast of it?"

"I had to. Can't you understand?"

The reporter struck his fist on the table. "God, sir! I don't
suppose there's a human being with a drop of warm blood in him that
can't picture the deadly horrors of remorse--"

The Celtic imagination was aflame, and Granice mutely thanked him
for the word. What neither Ascham nor Denver would accept as a
conceivable motive the Irish reporter seized on as the most
adequate; and, as he said, once one could find a convincing motive,
the difficulties of the case became so many incentives to effort.