Do as I say, and your life
shall go on as it is--as you have planned. Refuse, and I will turn you
over to the officers, and you will go back to your hell for the remainder
of your life.'
"Do you wonder, Miss Andres, that the convict obeyed his master?"
The girl's face was white with despair, but she did not lose her
self-control. She answered the man, thoughtfully--as though they were
discussing some situation in which neither had a vital interest. "I think,
Mr. Marston," she said, "that it would depend upon what it was that the
man wanted the convict to do. It seems to me that I can imagine the
convict being happier in prison, knowing that he had not done what the man
wanted, than he would he, free, remembering what he had done to gain his
freedom. What was it the man wanted?"
Breathlessly, Sibyl waited the answer.
The man on the other side of the fire did not speak.
At last, in a voice hoarse with emotion, Henry Marston said, "Freedom and
a life of honorable usefulness purchased at a price, or hell, with only
the memory of a good deed--which should the man choose, Miss Andres?"
"I think," she replied, "that you should tell me, plainly, what it was
that the man wanted the convict to do.
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