tart and fell hastily back before a quickly entering figure of
such passion and fury as neither of these men had ever seen before.

It was Oswald! Oswald, the kindly! Oswald, the lover of men and the
adorer of women! Oswald, with the words of the dastardly confession he
had partly overheard searing hot within his brain! Oswald, raised in
a moment from the desponding invalid to a terrifying ministrant of
retributive justice.

Orlando could scarcely raise his hand before the other's was upon his
throat.

"Murderer! doubly-dyed murderer of innocent women!" was hissed in the
strong man's ears. "Not with the law but with me you must reckon, and
may God and the spirit of my mother nerve my arm!"

XL. DESOLATE

The struggle was fierce but momentary. Oswald with his weakened
powers could not long withstand the steady exertion of Orlando's giant
strength, and ere long sank away from the contest into Mr. Challoner's
arms.

"You should not have summoned the shade of our mother to your aid,"
observed the other with a smile, in which the irony was lost in terrible
presage. "I was always her favourite."

Oswald shuddered. Orlando had spoken truly; she had always been blindly,
arrogantly trustful of her eldest son. No fault could she see in him;
and now--

Impetuously Oswald struggled with his weakness, raised himself in Mr.
Challoner's arms and cried in loud revolt:

"But God is just. He will not let you escape. If He does, I will not.
I will hound you to the ends of this earth and, if necessary, into the
eternities. Not with the threat of my arm--you are my master there, but
with the curse of a brother who believed you innocent of his darling's
blood and would have believed you so in face of everything but your own
word."

"Peace!" adjured Orlando. "There is no account I am not ready to settle.
I have robbed you of the woman you love, but I have despoiled myself.
I stand desolate in the world, who but an hour ago could have chosen my
seat among the best and greatest. What can your curses do after that?"

"Nothing." The word came slowly like a drop wrung from a nearly spent
heart. "Nothing; nothing. Oh, Orlando, I wish we were both dead and
buried and that there were no further life for either of us."

The softened tone, the wistful prayer which would blot out an
immortality of joy for the one, that it might save the other from
an immortality of retribution, touched some long unsounded chord in
Orlando's extra