"There's a newer doctrine than that, uncle," David insisted. "You talk with the voice of the black-frocked minister who dangles Hell in front of his congregation. There is something else can clear away sin, and the Book over which you pore, day by day, will teach it you, if you know where to look for it. There's love."
"Was it love, then, that brought him down through the darkness to dishonour my daughter?" Vont demanded, with blazing eyes.
"It didn't seem like it, but love must have been there," David answered. "Nothing but love could have kept these two people together all this time, each filling a great place in the other's life. I haven't thought of these things much, uncle, but I tell you frankly, I've read the Bible as well as you, and I don't believe in this black ogre of unforgivable sin. If these two started in wrong fashion, they've purified themselves. I hold that it's your duty now to leave them alone. I say that this vengeance you still hanker after is the eye for an eye and limb for a limb of the Old Testament. There has been a greater light in the world since then."
"Have you done?" Vont asked, without the slightest change in his tone or expression.
"I suppose so," David replied wearily. "I wish you'd think over it all, uncle. I know I'm right. I know there is justice in my point of view."
"I'll not argue with you, lad," his uncle declared. "I'll ask you no'but this one question, and before you answer it just go back in your mind to the night we stood outside my shack, when the wind was blowing up from the valleys. Are you going to stand by your pledged word or are you going to play me false?"
The great clock ticked drearily on. From outside came the clatter of teacups. David walked to the latticed window and came back again. Richard Vont was seated in his high-backed chair, his hands grasping its sides. His mouth was as hard and tightly drawn as one of his own vermin traps, but his eyes, steadfastly fixed upon his nephew, were filled with an inscrutable pathos. David remembered that passionate outburst of feeling on a far-distant night, when the tears had rolled down this man's cheeks and his voice was choked with sobs. And he remembered--
"I shall keep my word in every way," he promised solemnly.