“I, Carleton Roberts, in face of an inquiry which is about to be held on the death of her who called herself Angeline Willetts, but whose real name is as I have since been told Angeline Duclos, wish to make this statement in connection with the same.

“It was at my hand she died.  I strung the bow and let fly the arrow which killed this unfortunate child.  Not with the intention of finding my mark in her innocent bosom.  She simply got in the way of the woman for whom it was intended—­if I really was governed by intent, of which I here declare before God I am by no means sure.

“The child was a stranger to me, but the woman in whose stead she inadvertently perished I had known long and well.  My wrongs to her had been great, but she had kept silence during my whole married life and in my blind confidence in the exemption this seemed to afford me, I put no curb upon my ambition which had already carried me far beyond my deserts.  Those who read these lines may know how majestic were my hopes, how imminent the honor, to attain which I have employed my best energies for years.  Life was bright, the future dazzling.  Though I had neither wife nor child, the promise of activity on the lines which appeal to every man of political instinct gave me all I seemed to need in the way of compensation.  I was happy, arrogantly so, perhaps, when without warning the woman I had not seen in years, who,—­if I thought of her at all, I honestly believed to be dead—­wrote me a letter recalling her claims and proposing a speedy interview, with a view to their immediate settlement.  Though couched in courteous terms, the whole letter was instinct with a confidence which staggered me.  She meant to reenter my life, and if I knew her, openly.  Nothing short of bearing my name and being introduced to the world as my wife would satisfy her; and this not only threatened a scandal destructive of my hopes, but involved the breaking of a fresh matrimonial engagement into which I had lately entered with more ardor I fear than judgment.  What was I to do?  Let her have her way—­this woman I had not seen in fifteen years,—­who if at the age of twenty had seemed to my enthusiastic youth little short of a poet’s dream, must be far short of any such perfection now?  I rebelled at the very thought.  Yet to deny her meant the possible facing of consequences such as the strongest may well shrink from.  And the time for choice was short.  She had limited her patience to a fortnight, and one day of that fortnight had already passed.

“I have in my arrogant manhood sometimes credited myself with the possession of a mind of more or less superiority; but I have never deceived myself as to the meretricious quality of the goodness with which many have thoughtlessly endowed me.  I have always known it was not even up to that of men whose standards fall far short of the highest integrity.  But never, till that hour came, had