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Updated: June 24, 2025
Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was always a chance that the dying man had said something to her.
I would have killed him myself, for he had made Rafe Gadbeau do many things that he would not have done. He made my love a murderer. I went to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of the fire. But I would have killed that man myself with the gun if I could. So I hated him. When I saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee. See, Mon Pere, I am guilty.
And when all was said and done Rafe Gadbeau was in Heaven. As she left the Run and was crossing up to the divide she met Jeffrey Whiting coming down. He had been over in the Wilbur's Fork country and was returning home. He stopped and showed that he was anxious to talk with her. Cynthe was not averse.
Some whisper of the well-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of Rafe Gadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lips began to form the words of the Act of Contrition. As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body in his arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man.
She was convinced that this girl knew that Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of Samuel Rogers and that Jeffrey Whiting was innocent. She had not thought that Ruth would be called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only decided upon it at the last moment.
He wandered into many blind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he at last came upon the truth and stuck to it. Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and had almost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruth and the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence. He had confessed.
Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been hearing the words of that last cry of the dying man. She did not know how near they came to her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had stood with his gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under any circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears.
Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of fright and bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could not grapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind. This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her love and her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from the dark blot of murder.
Fear was gone, and doubt, and anxiety. She would save Jeffrey, and she would save the poor, befooled people from ruin. God had told her so, as He walked abroad in the Glow of Dawn. Two long hours more she waited, but now with patience and a sure confidence. Then Rafe Gadbeau came out of the hut and strode down the path to his pony.
So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very beginning: "Four years ago," she said, "Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know who had done it.
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