ugh he had a grievance against me, as,
perhaps, he had--from his point of view. 'You faded from my mind for
twenty years,' he said. 'But here--in Cornwall--your memory began to haunt
me. It was your footsteps, principally. I used to fancy you were following
me across the moors. Tonight for the first time I actually heard
them--heard them above the noise of the storm. They came to my ears clear
and sharp, around the house, on the rocks, under the window.' He cast on
me an appalled, a hopeless glance. 'Why have you left it so long?' he
cried. 'What do you want--now?'

"He positively had no glimmering of my feelings. His fixed idea, like a
cancerous growth, had sucked all the healthy life out of him. Hot anger
stirred within me again, but I retained control of myself this time. I
asked him how he had found out about the earlier marriage, and he told me
Alice had babbled something in her delirium--enough to arouse his
suspicions. It seemed that he had waited for one of her lucid intervals,
and wormed the truth out of her. 'The proofs--of course you've obtained
them?' I asked casually. Yes, he had the proofs. He had sent to London for
them immediately. I asked him where they were. 'What do you want to know
for?' he asked in an agitated voice. I told him quite simply, that he must
give me his proofs and tell the members of his family that he had been
mistaken--that Alice's first husband had really died before she married
him. If he agreed to do that he had nothing farther to fear from me--I
would remain dead forever. 'You can destroy proofs, but not facts,' he
muttered in reply to this. I told him the facts were never likely to come
to light if he entered into a compact of silence.

"He sat for a few moments as if contemplating the alternatives I had
placed before him--sat with one hand in his table-drawer, seeking for
papers, I thought. He desisted from doing this, and said quite suddenly,
'The proofs are in the clock-case.'

"I had no suspicion. He had once shown me a curious receptacle in the
bottom of the clock-case, where he kept papers. I went towards the clock,
and was stooping over the drawer in the bottom of the case when I heard a
swift footstep behind me. I turned. He was approaching with a revolver.
The secret of his disclosure and the open drawer were explained. I suppose
I owed my life to his dim sight, which compelled him to come so near.

"I sprang at him, and we struggled. That struggle brought down the clo