Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1921-10-31
CHAPTER NIX.
The End.

: "WhenA I had read this extraordinary
confession l sat for a long time in the
W1ndoW4saying a word, just thinking
over it's revelations. 1t made all the
details absolutely clear; it did not
leave.a dusty corner in the whole:
And curious thing is that, as I read.
and as I learned by degrees and SEN
tence" by sentence, the full horoor of
poor Uncle Ralph's act. it still did no,
occur to me to blame him very great
~ Mn my mind. Dr..
An. immense pity for him was the
over-powering feeling. He was so
infinitely better, and in every moral
sense bigger, than either Of these two
people, one Of whom he had set out
to murder n the other of whom he
actually had murdered. Yet both Of
them seemed to me like the sinners,
and he, relatively, the saint.
And then it was 50 curious that |
a person so entirely simple and un-
subtle as my uncle. writing in such |
very unpublished and sunliterary
phrase, should AVE posed such really
subtle moral and legal problems-his
moral guilt of the murder of a man
still alive, his moral blamelessness for
the death of a woman, his own wife,
whom ne had murdered.
That was one curious problem, and
another was his legal fiction by which
he conceived the law doing so much
better than it knew, achieving sou1c-
thing like equity by it's own porten-
tous error, awarding to a malefactor
the punishment he deserved, in the
form of the preliminaries for the final
penalty, decreed on him for a crime
of which he was guiltless.
] had beer so absorbed in reading
and afterward in thinking hat it was
only gradually that the recollection
came to me of the manner in when
Uncle Ra,ph's confession-if that is
the right word OF use for it-had
been brought to me. I glanced round.
The little man in gray was sitting in
his own immobile way in the depths
of the armchair. He was scarcely
visible.
Nevertheless he was the first to
speak, although he had not said a
when I sbegan reading. He knew
that my thought was turning to him
and he, said, to meet.it:
$."I have been mistaken in many
cases BEFORE Miss Carlton. butt have
never been so enti:c ely >mtsled by the
evidence as I have benin this case"
S;t.s1t} must have Been UNCLE Ralph,
after ALL replied, H.that,I saw 60
ing out Eover the gravel, that night,
oSAAo ~ ~ "SuS LA NA40
Summer-house."<
oubtedly it was, he, agreed,
"and-it was SIR Ralph. too, when he
first went. to the SImnrer-house, who
made the, first footprint beneath the
window, h footprint thatsI ascribed,
to Granger. At every turn of this afS
fair Miss Carlton, your intuition has.
been. better than my reasoning"
n"Unfortunate.y,'" I said. But tell
me, please, what does it mean-this %
] indicated Uncle Ralph's manuscript.
1T was given to you. What shall you
do with TIP
1T will have to be submitted, in
the first place, to Captain Vibart's
lawyers, and it will mean, without
doubt, his free pardon. There a
be nc question Of it's authenticity. Sir
Ralph handed it to ne himself before
he went to France, and you, If need
ed, or a hundred others, can testify
to his handwriting and signature
And it will be made public-every-
body win know what uncle did-after
the way he died?"
I'm an ordinary way>I should say it
would all have toibe made public. But
the case is an extraordinary one. the
times are extraordinary. Sir Ra.ph's
end was extraordinary. So far as lies
with me-, but hat means very little, /
will try that 1t shall be kept secret"
To the best of my knowledge 1t was.
'T'he Mystery Of NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS."
as the papers had called It. remained
a mystery, and a mystery which, for
the public. was only deepened Ky
Captain vibart's free pardon. Us.
press might not 80 willingly have LET
it &c as a mystery ~unsolved had ISA
tho a of every paper been more
than fully occupied with events that