“Hush!” cried Mantel; “you are talking aloud!”

“Yes, I am talking aloud,” he answered, “and I mean to talk louder yet!  I want you to hear that I am not a murderer, a murderer!  Do you understand?  I am going to rush out into the streets to cry out at the top of my voice—­I am not a murderer!”

Terrified at his violence, Mantel pushed him farther back into the doorway; but he sprang out again as if his very life depended upon the sight of the great white face.

“Be quiet!” Mantel cried, seizing his arm with an iron grip.

The pain restored him to his senses.  “What did I say?” he asked anxiously.

“You said, ‘I am not a murderer,’” Mantel whispered.

“And it is true!  I am not!” he replied, with but little less violence than before.

“Look at this hand, Mantel!  I have not looked at it myself for more than three years without seeing spots of blood on it!  And now it looks as white as snow to me!  See how firm I can hold it!  And yet through all those long and terrible years, it has trembled like a leaf.  Tell me, am I not right?  Is it not white and firm?”

“Yes, yes.  It is; but hush.  You are in danger of being overheard, and if you are not careful, in a moment more we shall be in the hands of the police!”

“No matter if I am,” he cried, almost beside himself, and rapturously embracing his friend.  “Nothing could give me more pleasure than a trial for my crime, for my victim would be my witness!  He is not dead.  He is out there in the street.  Mantel, you don’t know what happiness is!  You don’t know how sweet it is to be alive!  A mountain has been taken from my shoulders.  I no longer have any secret!  I will tell you the whole story of my life, now.”

“Not now; but later on, when we are alone.  Let us leave this spot and go to our rooms.”

“No, no!  Don’t stir!  We might lose him, and if we did, I could never persuade myself that this was not a dream!  We will stay here until he leaves, and then we will follow him and prove beyond a doubt that this is a real man and not the vision of an overheated brain.  We will follow him, I say, and if he is really flesh and blood, and not a poor ghost, we will help him, you and I. Poor old man!  How sad he looks!  And no wonder!  You don’t know of what I robbed him!”

David had now grown more quiet, and they stood patiently waiting for the time to come when the old beggar should leave his post and retire to his home, if home he had.

At last he received his signal for departure.  A shadow fell from the roof of the tall building opposite, upon the pupil of an eye, which perhaps felt the darkness it could not see.  The building was his dial.  Like millions of his fellow creatures, he measured life by advancing shadows.

He arose, and in his mien and movements there was a certain majesty.  Placing his hat upon his storm-beaten head, he folded the camp-chair under his arm, took the leading string in his hand and followed the little dog, who began picking his way with fine care through the surging crowd.