, with the loud "Halloo!" had startled him? Can you say,
Luke? Can you say, John? I can say, in whose ear it was whispered that
three, if not more of you were seen moving among the machinery that
fatal morning.

"'Again God's providence was said to have visited my house; and again
_ye_ were my heirs.'"

"Stop there!" broke in the harsh voice of Luke, who was gradually
growing livid under his long grey locks.

"Lies! lies!" shrieked Hector, gathering courage from his brother.

"Cut it all and give us the drink!" snarled one of the younger men, who
was less under the effect of liquor than the rest.

But a trembling voice muttered "Hush!" and the lawyer, whose eye had
grown steely under these comments, took advantage of the sudden silence
which had followed this last objurgation, and went steadily on:

"'Some men would have made a will and denounced you. I made a will, but
did not denounce you. _I_ am no breaker of oaths. More than this, I
learned a new trick. I, who hated all subtlety, and looked upon craft as
the favourite weapon of the devil, learned to smile with my lips while
my heart was burning with hatred. Perhaps this was why you all began to
smile, too, and joke me about certain losses I had sustained, by which
you meant the gains which had come to me. That these gains were many
times greater than you realised added to the sting of this
good-fellowship, but I held my peace, and you began to have confidence
in a good-nature which nothing could shake. You even gave me a supper.'"

_A supper!_

What was there in these words to cause every man there to stop in
whatever movement he was making, and stare with wide-open eyes intently
at the reader? He had spoken quietly; he had not even looked up; but the
silence which for some minutes back had begun to reign over that
tumultuous gathering now became breathless, and the seams in Hector's
cheeks deepened to a bluish criss-cross.

"'_You remember that supper?_'"

As the word rang out again I threw wide the door. I might have stalked
openly into their circle; not a man there would have noticed me.

"'It was a memorable occasion,'" the lawyer read on, with stoical
impassiveness. "'There was not a brother lacking. Luke, and Hudson, and
William, and Hector, and Eustace's boys, as well as Eustace himself;
Janet too, and Salmon's Lemuel, and Barbara's son, who, even if his
mother had gone the way of all flesh, had so trained her black brood in
the love of the thing