f without much pleasure, it appeared.

"You're late," he remarked.

"You drunken fool," Neil began furiously, then stopped, staring at his
cousin. Whatever the meaning of this exhibition was, Charlie was not
drunk. The excitement that possessed him was excitement of some other
kind. It possessed him entirely, though it was under control for the
moment. His muscles twitched with it. His shoulders shifted restlessly.
His hands closed and unclosed. His eyes were strangely lit, and there
was an absent, exalted look about them. Whatever the excitement, it was
strong--stronger than Charlie. Neil, his eyes now used to the
half-light, could see no weapon in the room, dropped on the floor or
discarded. Mr. Brady, normally a coward in his cups and out of them, had
attacked his enemy with his bare hands.

"Charlie, what's got you?" Neil said. "What's come to you?"

"What's come to him, there?" Charlie said, in a voice that was changed,
too, and was as remote and as strange as his eyes, a low voice, with the
deceptive, terrible calm of gathering hysteria about it.

"Look what's come to him," the voice went on. "Don't he deserve it, and
worse? How did I find him to-day when I broke in through the window
there? At his old tricks again. There was a woman with him in the
library there, when he came out to me. He locked the door. She's there
now. Neil, you'd better get away from here. I don't know what you're
doing here, but you'd better go, and go quick."

He had given this advice indifferently. He made his next observation
indifferently, too, with his furtive, absent eyes on the library door.

"I've killed him."

"What's got you? Are you crazy?"

"No--not now. You'd better go. I want to take a look in there first. The
key's in the door."

"Charlie, come back here."

The note of command that he was used to responding to in his young
cousin's voice reached and controlled Mr. Brady even now; he obeyed and
swung round and stood still, looking at Neil. Neil's dark eyes, just
above the level of his own, and so like them, were unrecognizable now.
They were dull with anger, and they were angry with him.

"What's the matter?" he quavered. "What's the matter, Neil?"

Between the two cousins, as they stood facing each other, the Colonel
lay ominously still. The cruel eyes did not open, and the distorted
mouth did not change.

"Look! You can see for yourself. Feel his heart," Mr. Brady offered, but
his cousin's dark, disconcertin