“Your father has been sorely troubled in mind,” said Doctor Danvers, as soon as the young man had read this communication; “he has told me as much; it may be that the discovery he has now made may possibly have relieved him from certain galling anxieties.  The fear that unjust suspicion should light upon himself, or those connected with him, has, I dare say, tormented him sorely.  God grant, that as the providential unfolding of all the details of this mysterious crime comes about, he maybe brought to recognize, in the just and terrible process, the hand of heaven.  God grant, that at last his heart may be softened, and his spirit illuminated by the blessed influence he has so long and so sternly rejected.”

As the old man thus spake—­as if in symbolic answering to his prayer—­a sudden glory from the setting sun streamed through the funereal pile of clouds which filled the western horizon, and flooded the chamber where they were.

After a silence, Charles Marston said, with some little embarrassment—­“It may be a strange confession to make, though, indeed, hardly so to you—­for you know but too well the gloomy reserve with which my father has uniformly treated me—­that the exact nature of Merton’s confession never reached my ears; and once or twice, when I approached the subject, in conversation with you, it seemed to me that the subject was one which, for some reason, it was painful to you to enter upon.”

“And so it was, in truth, my young friend—­so it was; for that confession left behind it many fearful doubts, proving, indeed, nothing but the one fact, that, morally, the wretched man was guilty of the murder.”

Charles, urged by a feeling of the keenest interest, requested Dr. Danvers to detail to him the particulars of the dying man’s narration.

“Willingly,” answered Dr. Danvers, with a look of gloom, and heaving a profound sigh—­“willingly, for you have now come to an age when you may safely be entrusted with secrets affecting your own family, and which, although, thank God, as I believe they in no respect involve the honor of anyone of its members, yet might deeply involve its peace and its security against the assaults of vague and horrible slander.  Here, then, is the narrative:  Merton, when he was conscious of the approach of death, qualified, by a circumstantial and detailed statement, the absolute confession of guilt which he had at first sullenly made.  In this he declared that the guilt of design and intention only was his—­that in the act itself he had been anticipated.  He stated, that from the moment when Sir Wynston’s servant had casually mentioned the circumstance of his master’s usually sleeping with his watch and pocketbook under his pillow, the idea of robbing him had taken possession of his mind.  With the idea of robbing him (under the peculiar circumstances, his servant sleeping in the apartment close by, and the slightest alarm being, in all probability, sufficient to call him to the