"
"How long ago did you leave your fazenda?"
"About nine weeks."
"Why?"
"As to that, sir," answered Dacosta, "I invented a pretext, but in
reality I had a motive."
"What was the pretext?"
"The responsibility of taking into Para a large raft, and a cargo of
different products of the Amazon."
"Ah! and what was the real motive of your departure?"
And in asking this question Jarriquez said to himself:
"Now we shall get into denials and falsehoods."
"The real motive," replied Joam Dacosta, in a firm voice, "was the
resolution I had taken to give myself up to the justice of my
country."
"You give yourself up!" exclaimed the judge, rising from his stool.
"You give yourself up of your own free will?"
"Of my own free will."
"And why?"
"Because I had had enough of this lying life, this obligation to live
under a false name, of this impossibility to be able to restore to my
wife and children that which belongs to them; in short, sir,
because----"
"Because?"
"I was innocent!"
"That is what I was waiting for," said Judge Jarriquez.
Pages:
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319