The River's End by James Oliver Curwood (large ebook reader TXT) 📕

last I went to your door and listened, and then I knocked, and after that I called to you, and when you didn't answer, I entered your room."
"Dear heaven!" breathed Keith. "After all that, you would have come away with me, covered with blood, a--a murderer, they say--a hunted man--"
"John, dear." She took one of his hands in both her own and held it tight. "John, dear, I've got something to tell you."
He was silent.
"I made Duggan promise not to tell you I was here when he found you, and I made him promise something else--to keep a secret I wanted to tell you myself. It was wonderful of him. I don't see how he did it."
She snuggled still closer to him, and held his hand a little tighter. "You see, John, there was a terrible time after you killed Shan Tung. Only a little while after you had gone, I saw the sky growing red. It was Shan Tung's place--afire. I was terrified, and my heart was broken, and I didn't move. I must have sat at the window a long time, when the door burst open suddenly and Miriam ran in, and behind her came McDowell. Oh, I never heard a man swear as McDowell swore when he found you had gone, and Miriam flung herself on the floor at my feet and buried her head in my lap.
"McDowell tramped up and down, and at last he turned to me as if he was going to eat me, and he fairly shouted, 'Do you know--THAT CURSED FOOL DIDN'T KILL JUDGE KIRKSTONE!'"
There was a pause in which Keith's brain reeled. And Mary Josephine went on, as quietly as though she were talking about that evening's sunset:
"Of course, I knew all along, from what you had told me about John Keith, that he wasn't what you would call a murderer. You see, John, I had learned to LOVE John Keith. It was the other thing that horrified me! In the fight, that night, Judge Kirkstone wasn't badly hurt, just stunned. Peter Kirkstone and his father were always quarreling. Peter wanted money, and his father wouldn't give it to him. It seems impossible,--what happened then. But it's true. After you were gone, PETER KIRKSTONE KILLED HIS FATHER THAT HE MIGHT INHERIT THE ESTATE! And then he laid the crime on you!"
"My God!" breathed Keith. "Mary--Mary Josephine--how do you know?"
"Peter Kirkstone was terribly burned in the fire. He died that night, and before he died he confessed. That was the power Shan Tung held over Miriam. He knew. And Miriam was to pay the price that would save her brother from the hangman."
"And that," whispered Keith, as if to himself, "was why she was so interested in John Keith."
He looked away into the shimmering distance of the night, and for a long time both were silent. A woman had found happiness. A man's soul had come out of darkness into light.
THE END
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Publication Date: 11-27-2009

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