"It is who? Are you mad! Come away! People are observing you. If there is anything wrong, we must move or get into trouble."
"Let me alone!" David replied, shaking off his hand. "I would rather die than lose sight of that man."
"Then come into this doorway where you can watch him unobserved, for you are making a spectacle of yourself. Come, or I shall drag you."
With his eyes still riveted on that strange countenance, David yielded to the pressure of his friend's hand and they retired to a hallway whence he could watch the beggar unobserved. His whole frame was quivering with excitement and he kept murmuring to himself: "It is he. It is he! I cannot be mistaken! Nature never made his double! But how he has changed! How old and white he is! It cannot be his ghost, can it? If it were night I might think so, but it is broad daylight! This man is living flesh and blood and my hand is not, after all, the hand of a mur--"
"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."