“Well! now and again when we’d run across each other I’d find him looking at me in a queer, vague fashion, too; but I felt safe enough with him; like I did with Moran—­until this case came up.  After it was over, he and I happened to be alone, and, in a round-about way, he began asking me questions.  He did it so clumsily, though, that my suspicions were aroused at once.  Of course I bluffed him—­or thought I had—­easily for the moment, but one day I happened to be in the Post Office getting my mail when, amongst a bunch of letters on the counter I saw one addressed to ‘Gavin Blake, Esq., Governor of Barmsworth Prison, England.’  Old Kelly, the postmaster, having his back to me at the time, fumbling around the pigeon-holes, I promptly annexed this letter and slipped it into my pocket.

“When I opened it up my suspicions were verified.  Young Blake wrote to his father that he’d come across a man whom he could almost swear to as being one of the three convicts who’d broken out of Barmsworth some years back.  He asked what steps he’d better take in the case—­if the original warrant issued for me could be forwarded to the Mounted Police, and so on.  He said his intentions were to try and gain further evidence, and in the meantime to confide in no one about his suspicions until he received definite instructions what steps to take.

“I guess the devil must have got a good grip on me again after I’d read that letter.  It seemed no use trying to redeem the past with outsiders like young Blake making it their business to butt in and lay one by the heels.  Anyway, like Satan at prayers, I didn’t feel like being coolly sacrificed when my years of honest effort were drawing near their reward in the shape of a fairly prosperous ranch—­just at the whim of a lazy, profligate young busy-body.

“From that hour Larry Blake was practically—­’gone up.’  I’d deliberately made up my mind to put him out of business on the first convenient opportunity that presented itself.  That opportunity came on the night he was fighting with Moran in the hotel.  I thought I could kill two birds with one stone.  I’ll admit it was a devilish idea, but I was desperate.  Of course things didn’t shape out as I’d planned—­Moran’s alibi for instance, or that hobo, Drinkwater.

“I know to you it will only appear sheer nonsense on my part ever to start in attempting to justify my—­my abolishment of him.  But this—­what I am going to tell you—­is the absolute truth of what happened.  In the first place—­when he spotted me bringing Moran’s horse into the stable that night—­although I was mad and man-handled the poor devil at the time—­I felt fairly easy in my mind later, thinking he would drift out of town next day, after the manner of his kind.  But when he was brought up in front of me afterwards, I realized the serious predicament I was in.”