d be recovered. If so, I slew him twice,
by launching him into that pit. God forgive me!"

"Is it so deep?" asked Anne, shuddering. "I know there is a sort of
step at the top; but I always shunned the place, and never looked
in."

"There are two or three steps at the top, but all is broken away
below. Sedley and I once threw a ball down, and I am sure it
dropped to a depth down which no man could fall and _live_. I
believe there once were underground passages leading to the harbour
on one hand, and out to Portsdown Hill on the other, but that the
communication was broken away and the openings destroyed when Lord
Goring was governor of Portsmouth, to secure the castle. Be that as
it may, he could not have been living after he reached that floor.
I heard the thud, and the jingle of his sword, and it will haunt me
to my dying day."

"And yet you never intended it. You did it in defence of me. You
did not mean to strike thus hard. It was an accident."

"Would that I could so feel it!" he sighed. "Nay, of course I had
no evil design when my poor little wife drove me out to give you her
rag of ribbon, or whatever it was; but I hated as well as despised
the fellow. He had angered me with his scorn--well deserved, as now
I see--of our lubberly ways. She had vexed me with her teasing
commendations--out of harmless mischief, poor child. I hated him
more every time you looked at him, and when I had occasion to strike
him I was glad of it. There was murder in my heart, and I felt as
if I were putting a rat or a weasel out of the way when I threw him
down that pit. God forgive me! Then, in my madness, I so acted
that in a manner I was the death of that poor young thing."

"No, no, sir. Your mother had never thought she would live."

"So they say; but her face comes before me in reproach. There are
times when I feel myself a double murderer. I have been on the
point of telling all to Mr. Fellowes, or going home to accuse
myself. Only the thought of my father and mother, and of leaving
such a blight on that poor baby, has withheld me; but I cannot go
home to face the sight of the castle."

"No," said Anne, choked with tears.

"Nor is there any suspicion of the poor fellow's fate," he added.

"Not that I ever heard."

"His family think him fled, as was like enough, considering the way
in which they treated him," said Charles. "Nor do I see what good
it would do them to know the truth."

"It would onl