"I know it’s a lot for you to have to give up," she went on; "but you ought to be willing to give up a lot if—if you——"
"Then," pursued Luke—the tone was his laziest—"what about her love for me? Isn’t it to——"
Betty interrupted. She had taken Forbes’s hand:
"You’re not going to make me choose between you and father, are you?" she pleaded.
"I tell you," said Luke, "it isn’t anything of that sort, Betty. I’ve got to do what I’m going to do. You haven’t any choice, and neither have I. You might almost say it’s a religious question. It’s like saving my soul. I’ve got to do it; I’ve just got to; just because it’s the one right thing, I’ve got to do it. Why"—his manner grew tense—"you don’t know; even your father doesn’t know. This North Bridge wreck, with all those people killed and wounded: that’s what these men did, these men that are trying to keep me out of the district-attorneyship."
"The North Bridge wreck?" snapped Forbes. "That was on the M. & N. What are you talking about, Huber?"
Luke realized that he had gone further than the limits of his promise of temporary silence concerning the letters, but he was too bitterly tried not to go still further.
"Yes," he said, "I mean just that. Everybody knows the N. Y. & N. J. crowd own the majority of the stock in the M. & N., and you know it, too. What’s more, this wreck was their direct fault. I can prove that and I mean to. That’s why they’re after me: I mean to prove it if they don’t square things. And so they’re afraid of me."
"Ridiculous!" said Forbes. "That’s just the trouble with you, Huber: you’re going about making wild, unfounded statements like this."
"I ought not to tell even you two," Luke answered; "but the fact is, I have letters written by one of these men that will substantiate every word I say."
"You mean they’ll show these people owned the road?"
"Practically, and ordered the poor rails that caused that wreck."
"Absurd: they couldn’t do that. They didn’t operate the road. This sort of thing is what is upsetting legitimate business: a few men going on the way you are. I don’t think these people at the top are any better than they should be—I’ve often said so to you—but you can’t go around calling them murderers. That’s ridiculous."