way up to the library, and "used threatening language." The
house-keeper found cousin Joseph gasping, the whites of his eyes showing
"something awful." The doctor was sent for, and the attack warded off;
and the police had ordered the Italian from the neighbourhood.

But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had "nerves," and lost his
taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a colleague, and
the consultation amused and excited the old man--he became once more
an important figure. The medical men reassured the family--too
completely!--and to the patient they recommended a more varied diet:
advised him to take whatever "tempted him." And so one day, tremulously,
prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought up
with ceremony, and consumed in the presence of the house-keeper and a
hovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead...

"But you remember the circumstances," Granice went on; "how suspicion
turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint the police had given
him he had been seen hanging about the house since 'the scene.' It was
said that he had tender relations with the kitchen-maid, and the rest
seemed easy to explain. But when they looked round to ask him for the
explanation he was gone--gone clean out of sight. He had been 'warned'
to leave Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no one
ever laid eyes on him again."

Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the lawyer's, and
he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking about the familiar
room. Everything in it had grown grimacing and alien, and each strange
insistent object seemed craning forward from its place to hear him.

"It was I who put the stuff in the melon," he said. "And I don't want
you to think I'm sorry for it. This isn't 'remorse,' understand. I'm
glad the old skin-flint is dead--I'm glad the others have their money.
But mine's no use to me any more. My sister married miserably, and died.
And I've never had what I wanted."

Ascham continued to stare; then he said: "What on earth was your object,
then?"

"Why, to GET what I wanted--what I fancied was in reach! I wanted
change, rest, LIFE, for both of us--wanted, above all, for myself, the
chance to write! I travelled, got back my health, and came home to
tie myself up to my work. And I've slaved at it steadily for ten years
without reward--without the most distant hope of success! Nobody will
look at my stuff. And now