In the end we reached Mexico City in safety, and there Emma and I were
married. Ten days later we were on board ship steaming for England.



CHAPTER III

SIR JOHN BELL

Now it is that I came to the great and terrible event of my life, which
in its result turned me into a false witness and a fraud, and bound
upon my spirit a weight of blood-guiltiness greater than a man is
often called upon to bear. As I have not scrupled to show I have
constitutional weaknesses--more, I am a sinner, I know it; I have sinned
against the code of my profession, and have preached a doctrine I knew
to be false, using all my skill and knowledge to confuse and pervert the
minds of the ignorant. And yet I am not altogether responsible for these
sins, which in truth in the first place were forced upon me by shame and
want and afterwards by the necessities of my ambition. Indeed, in that
dark and desperate road of deceit there is no room to turn; the step
once taken can never be retraced.

But if I have sinned, how much greater is the crime of the man who swore
away my honour and forced me through those gateways? Surely on his head
and not on mine should rest the burden of my deeds; yet he prospered all
his life, and I have been told that his death was happy and painless.
This man's career furnishes one of the few arguments that to my