"
"Safe--safe?" mused Mother Borton, an absent look coming over her
skinny features, as though her mind wandered. Then she turned to me
impressively. "You'll never be safe till you change your work and your
name. You've shut your ears to my words while I'm alive, but maybe
you'll think of 'em when I'm in my coffin. I tell you now, my boy,
there's murder and death before you. Do you hear? Murder and death."
She sank back on her pillow and gazed at me with a wearied light in her
eyes and a sibyl look on her face.
"I think I understand," I said gently. "I have faced them and I ought
to know them."
"Then you'll--you'll quit your job--you'll be yourself?"
"I can not. I must go on."
"And why?"
"My friend--his work--his murderer."
"Have you got the man who murdered Henry Wilton?"
"No."
"Have you got a man who will give a word against--against--you know
who?"
"I have not a scrap of evidence against any one but the testimony of my
own eyes," I was compelled to confess.
"And you can't use it--you dare not use it. Now I'll tell you, dearie,
I know the man as killed Henry Wilton."
"Who was it?" I cried, startled into eagerness.
"It was Black Dick--the cursed scoundrel that's done for me. Oh!" she
groaned in pain.
"Maybe Black Dick struck the blow, but I know the man that stood behind
him, and paid him, and protected him, and I'll see him on the gallows
before I die."
"Hush," cried Mother Borton trembling. "If he should hear you! Your
throat will be cut yet, dearie, and I'm to blame.
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