Tom started as if he had been struck with a whip.

“Hold on, Uncle Silas,” he broke in hardily.  “That’s mighty near a fighting word, even between blood kin.  When have you ever caught me in a lie?”

“Now!” thundered the accusing voice; “this moment!  You have been giving me to understand that your sinful rebellion at Beersheba was the worst that could be charged against you.  Answer me:  isn’t that what you want me to believe?”

“I don’t care whether you believe it or not.  It’s so.”

“It is not so.  Here, at your own home, when your mother had just been spared to you by the mercies of the God whose commandments you set at naught, you have been wallowing in sin—­in crime!”

Tom locked his clasped fingers fast around his knees and would not open the flood-gates of passion.

“If I can sit here and take that from you, it’s because it isn’t so,” he replied soberly.

Silas Crafts rose, stern and pitiless.

“Wretched boy!  Out of your own mouth you shall be convicted.  Where were you on Wednesday morning?”

Tom had to think back before he could place the Wednesday morning, and his momentary hesitation was immediately set down to the score of conscious guilt.

“I was at home most of the time; between ten o’clock and noon I was on the mountain.”

“Alone?”

“No; not all of the time.”

“You say well.  There were three of you:  a hardened, degraded boy, a woman no less wicked and abandoned, and the devil who tempted you.”

The flood-gates of passion would hold no longer.

“It’s a lie!” he denied hotly.  “I just happened to meet Nan Bryerson at the spring under the big rock, and—­”

“Well, go on,” said the inexorable voice.

Tom choked in a sudden fit of rage and helplessness.  He saw how incredible the simple truth would sound; how like a clumsy equivocation it must appear to one who already believed the worst of him.  So he took refuge in the last resort alike of badgered innocence and hardened guilt.

“I don’t have to defend myself!” he burst out.  “If you can believe I’m that low-down, you’re welcome to!” Then, abruptly:  “I reckon we’d better be going on home; they’ll be waiting dinner for us at the house.”

He got on his feet with that, but the accuser was still confronting him, with the dark eyes glowing and a monitory finger pointed to detain him.

“Not yet, Thomas Gordon; there is a duty laid on me.  I had hoped and prayed that I might find you repentant; you are not repentant.”

“No,” said Tom, and he confirmed it with an oath in sheer bravado.

“Peace, miserable boy!  God is not mocked.  Your father has a letter from Doctor Tollivar; the doors of Beersheba are open to you again.  I had hoped—­” The pause was not for effect.  It was merely that the man and the kinsman in Silas Crafts had throttled the righteous judge.  “It breaks my heart, Thomas, but I must say it.  You have put it out of your power to say with the Psalmist, ’I will wash mine hands in innocency:  so will I compass thine altar, O Lord.’  You must give up all thoughts of going back to Beersheba.”