"You knew all this?" he gasped.
"Oh, yes; I reckon there isn't much happening that such a double-dyed
old villain as I am doesn't find out, Evan," was the sober rejoinder.
"But, good heavens! if you know so much, you must know what Gryson came
back for, and what he gave me!"
"Yes; I know that, too. I reckon I might as well make a clean breast of
it while I'm at it."
"You knew it last night, and yet you didn't send somebody to hold me up
and take the papers away from me?"
The senator's chuckle rumbled deep in his mighty chest.
"Maybe I was counting a little on the kinship, Evan, boy. Maybe I was
saying to myself: 'No, I reckon the boy won't do it, after all--not when
he reads what's set down in the papers; he just naturally couldn't do
it.'"
"Oh, my Lord, dad!" was the choking response. "Can't you see that you
are killing me by inches? Can't you see that I've got to choose between
being a man clear through, or a scoundrel as weak and shifty as any of
those I have been denouncing? My God, it's terrible!"
"I reckon you're going to choose straight," said the older man, still
with eyes averted.
"I have chosen," said the son brokenly; "or perhaps it would be truer to
say that there never has been any choice since the moment when I set my
foot in the path which has led me thus far on the way to hell.
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