why should I lie about it, now that it is come? When one
is as tired as I am, there is only one other thing which
happens--one dies. You don't suppose I should have sent for you like
this if it hadn't been so?"

He lay very still for a moment or two with his eyes closed, as if
the effort which speech cost him was considerable. At last he said
abruptly:

"There are things you should know; she is Lightmark's child."

Oswyn had seated himself on a low chair by the bed; he kept his head
averted, as does a priest who hears confessions; and he gazed with
absent eyes at the fire which burned sulkily, at the row of
medicine-bottles on the mantelpiece, at all the dreary paraphernalia
of a sick-room.

"Yes, she is Lightmark's child," continued Rainham; "and the mother
was that girl whom we found two years ago--do you remember?--the
night of your first visit here outside the gates. She called herself
Mrs. Crichton. It's a miserable story; I only discovered it quite
recently."

Oswyn drew in a deep breath, which sounded like a sigh in the
strangely still room.

It did not so much suggest surprise as the indefinable relief which
a man feels when accident permits him to express cognizance of some
fact of which he has long been inwardly assured.

"I knew that long ago," he said at last. "I suspected it when I
first saw the girl; but I said nothing to you at the time; perhaps I
was wrong. Afterwards, when we knew each other better, there seemed
no occasion; I had almost forgotten the episode."

"Yes," went on the other faintly; "we have all made mistakes--I more
than most folk, perhaps."

Then he asked suddenly:

"Had you any motive, any reason for your suspicion?"

"It was the name Crichton--the man's pseudonym on the _Outcry_. It
flashed across me then that she was after Lightmark. He was just
severing his connection with the paper. He had always kept it very
close, and I dare say I was one of the few persons who were in the
secret. That is why, at the bottom of his heart, he is afraid of
me--afraid that I shall bring it up. It's the one thing he is
ashamed of."

"I see, I see," cried Rainham wearily; "the wretched fellow!"

"Dear man, why should we think of him?" broke in Oswyn; "he isn't
worth it. Now of all seasons can't we find a topic less unsavoury?"

"You don't understand," continued Rainham, after a slight pause in
his thin, far-away voice. "I am not thinking of him, or only
indirectly. I have found him o