e-and-thirty at the present time. I know her age; and I know that
she has her own reasons for being silent about her married life. This is
something gained at the outset, and it may lead, in time, to something
more." He looked up brightly again at Mr. Brock. "Am I in the right way
now, sir? Am I doing my best to profit by the caution which you have
kindly given me?"

"You are vindicating your own better sense," answered the rector,
encouraging him to trample down his own imagination, with an
Englishman's ready distrust of the noblest of the human faculties. "You
are paving the way for your own happier life."

"Am I?" said the other, thoughtfully.

He searched among the papers once more, and stopped at another of the
scattered pages.

"The ship!" he exclaimed, suddenly, his color changing again, and his
manner altering on the instant.

"What ship?" asked the rector.

"The ship in which the deed was done," Midwinter answered, with the
first signs of impatience that he had shown yet. "The ship in which my
father's murderous hand turned the lock of the cabin door."

"What of it?" said Mr. Brock.

He appeared not to hear the question; his eyes remained fixed intently
on the page that he was reading.

"A French vessel, employed in the timber trade," he said, still speaking
to himself--"a French vessel, named _La Grace de Dieu_. If my father's
belief had been the right belief--if the fatality had been following me,
step by step, from my father's grave, in one or other of my voyages, I
should have fallen in with that ship." He looked up again at Mr. Brock.
"I am quite sure about it now," he said. "Those women are two, and not
one."

Mr. Brock shook his head.

"I am glad you have come to that conclusion," he said. "But I wish you
had reached it in some other way."

Midwinter started passionately to his feet, and, seizing on the pages of
the manuscript with both hands, flung them into the empty fireplace.

"For God's sake let me burn it!" he exclaimed. "As long as there is a
page left, I shall read it. And, as long as I read it, my father gets
the better of me, in spite of myself!"

Mr. Brock pointed to the match-box. In another moment the confession
was in flames. When the fire had consumed the last morsel of paper,
Midwinter drew a deep breath of relief.

"I may say, like Macbeth: 'Why, so, being gone, I am a man again!'"
he broke out with a feverish gayety. "You look fatigued, sir; and no
wonder," he added,