The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-10-04

Yet. If the rough farmers and labor CTS could have seen into his mind. and pierced the veil of his outward com In horror sfrom the the heliish tpmmif or ms thoughts. Every moment that ne spent in the room was agony to him. and more than once he nearly broke aown under the strain. His own ohame was made brutally clear to him by ner.
 You are murderer, and are forced 10 lie to save yourself from the con- sequences of your crime"
 The words rang in his ears, az though they had been shouted out by someone in the room. They came to him again and again and once muf- that lay so still under the white sheet in the net room. and yet once more In the tones of his mothers voice., e voice that he had not heard for more than ten years.
 Fear alone cohld not have support ed him him iR the hour of trial. The shame and bitterness of the scene were so intense that more than once he could scarcely restrain himself from making an open confession of the truth. For It must be remembered that John Shil was man who had lived an upright and honorable life, a man to whom the very thought of a lie was degredation. The crime it.
 
 the open lie that concealed 1t. The crime had been committed in a moment: looked at in favorable light, 1t was but the result of few seconds hesi- tation, repented of too late. Butt the lie was premeditated and spoken with due appreciation of It's foulness. It was an endorsement of the crime writ ten when the heat of passion had died away.
 Yet John shil would never nave lied to save his own life, and, to do the man justice, 1t was certain that but for the pleadings of Laura Vane he would have made an open confess sion several hours before the inquest. He had lied for the love of a woman, to save her from lifelong agony. and 1t was this thought alone that gave him strength to go through the or deal at the inauest. and restrain the ly drove him to make confession of
 Ke passed out of the stuffy room into the street # zHas nearly dark and he allowed the mask to fall from his face as he walked sharply through the village. His own house was In the park of Tankerlane Court and was more than mile away from Lav- erstone.
 The quick walk through the keen air restored his mind to more even balance, and by the time he reached Park Lodge he was convinced that af- ter all he haQ acted TOT the pest. The ordeal had been a cruel one, but it was over and done with. Ben Holland would be buried and the incident for gotten.
 Yet, as he sat in his smoking room before the fire that night, he realized all the darkness of his future, life without the woman he loved, a life forever stained by the memory of those few moments in the Round Plantation, a life that held out noth- ing, save the possibility of making some atonement for the past.
 And in another room, mile away, the woman, for whose sake he had lied, was thinking only of his happiness, and already making the arrangements for her sacrifice.
 Love was in both their hearts love so strong, that the man had sacrificed his honor and the woman her self-re- spect for the sake of 1t. It was for love that the man had lied, and for love that the woman had promised her self as a price of silence. Truly might 1t have been said of both of them "Oh. love, how many sins have been committed in thy name"
 And all the time Fate, grim and in- exorable, had no RIty and no thought for the sacrifices they had made Fol Fate moves in accordance with the law, and the law Is thts-that the wages of sin Is death.
 And vet God Himself is Love.