It would be disgrace eternal." "Why?
Tell me why, sir!" Dyck looked closely, firmly, at the old servant and friend.

Should he tell the truth--that Boyne had tried to induce him to sell himself to the French, to invoke his aid against the English government, to share in treason?
If he could have told it to anybody, he would have done so to Michael; but if it was true that in his drunken blindness he had killed Boyne, he would not seek to escape by proving Boyne a traitor.
He believed Boyne was a servant of the French; but unless the facts came out in the trial, they should not have sure origin in himself.

He would not add to his crime in killing the father of the only girl who had ever touched his heart, the shame of proving that father to be one who should have been shot as a traitor.
He had courage and daring, but not sufficient to carry him through that dark chapter.

He would not try to save himself by turning public opinion against Erris Boyne.

The man had been killed by some one, perhaps--and the thing ached in his heart--by himself; but that was no reason why the man's death should not be full punishment for all the wrong he had done.
Dyck had a foolish strain in him, after all.