“The Voice!  The Voice!” he whispered.  “Thou shalt not kill!  Thou shalt not kill!  You lie!” he cried in a sudden outburst of terrible fierceness.  “He was not a fool.  He loved men more than the mockery and cant of courts.  He loved—­he trusted me—­and I betrayed him.  Who knew when he fled wildly away from the pomp and inequalities he hated?  I!  Who watched for his secret letters?  I!  Who came to America when his letter of homesick pleading came?  I!  I!  I!  Who killed him when conscience and duty would have sent him back to the court of his father?  I, his cousin whom he loved above all men.  You lie.  I did love him.  I was drunk with the royal glitter ahead.  I craved it even as he hated it.  Thou shalt not kill!  Thou shalt not kill!  Mercy!  Mercy!  I can not bear it.”

He fell groveling upon the floor and crawled to Mic-co’s feet.

“The Voice bids me tell!” he whispered, clutching fearfully at Mic-co’s hand.  “Twice, since, I would have killed to keep this thing of the candlestick from creeping back and back until that thing of long ago lay uncovered and I disgraced! . . .  Theodomir hid in the Seminole village.  No—­no, you must listen—­the Voice bids me tell or lose my reason.  I came there at his bidding—­his marriage to the Indian girl had been unhappy.  He was homesick and this fair land of liberty had a rotten core.  I struck him down and fled.  You will heal and fight the Voice—­”

Mic-co bent and raised the groveling figure.

“Peace!” he said, his face very white.  “We will heal and quiet the Voice forever.  Come!” Gently he led the sick man away.

“He will sleep now, I think,” he said a little later.  “A drug is best when a Voice is mocking?—­”

The Baron leaned forward and caught Mic-co’s arm in a grasp of iron.

“Who are you,” he whispered, “that you suffer with him now?  You are white and shaking.  Who are you that you know the tongue of my country?”

Mic-co sighed.

“I,” said he sadly, “am that man he thought to kill!”

White-faced, the Baron stared at the snowy beard and hair and the fine, dark eyes.

“Theodomir!” he whispered brokenly.  “Theodomir!  It—­it can not be.”

He fell to pacing the floor in violent agitation.

“The eyes are quieter,” he said at length with an effort, “but the hair and heard so white!  I would not have guessed—­I would not have guessed!” Again he stared.

“Are you man or saint,” he cried at last, “that you can forgive as I have seen your eyes forgive to-night?”

“May a man look upon such remorse as that,” asked Mic-co, “and not forgive?  I loved him greatly.  Had I loved him less—­had I loved her less—­that Indian wife who had no love in her heart for me, this hair of mine would not have turned snow-white when the Indians were fanning the flickering spark of life into a blaze again.”