spot) the idea of anticipating resistance by murder had associated itself.  He had contended against these haunting and growing solicitations of Satan, with an earnest agony.  He had intended to leave his place, and fly from the mysterious temptation which he felt he wanted power to combat, but accident or fate prevented him.  In a state of ghastly excitement he had, on the memorable night of Sir Wynston’s murder, proceeded, as had afterwards appeared in evidence, by the back stair to the baronet’s chamber; he had softly stolen into it, and gone to the bedside, with the weapon in his hand.  He drew his breath for the decisive stroke, which was to bereave the (supposedly) sleeping man of life, and when stretching his left hand under the clothes, it rested upon a dull, cold corpse, and, at the same moment, his right hand was immersed in a pool of blood.  He dropped the knife, recoiled a pace or so.  With a painful effort, however, he again grasped with his hand to recover the weapon he had suffered to escape, and secured, as it afterwards turned out, not the knife with which he had meditated the commission of his crime, but the dagger which was afterwards found where he had concealed it.  He was now fully alive to the horror of his situation; he was compromised as fully as if he had in very deed driven home the weapon.  To be found under such circumstances, would convict him as surely as if fifty eyes had seen him strike the blow.  He had nothing now for it but flight; and in order to guard himself against the contingency of being surprised from the door opening upon the corridor, he bolted it; then groped under the murdered man’s pillow for the booty which had so fatally fascinated his imagination.  Here he was disappointed.  What further happened you already know.”

Charles listened with breathless attention to this recital, and, after a painful interval, said—­

“Then the actual murderer is, after all, unascertained.  This is, indeed, horrible; it was very natural that my father should have felt the danger to which such a disclosure would have exposed the reputation of our family, yet I should have preferred encountering it, were it ten times as great, to the equivocal prudence of suppressing the truth with respect to a murder committed under my own roof.”

“He has, however, it would seem, arrived at some new conclusions,” said Dr. Danvers, “and is now prepared to throw some unanticipated light upon the whole transaction.”

Even as they were talking, a knocking was heard at the hall-door, and after a brief and hurried consultation, it was agreed, that, considering the strict condition of privacy attached to this visit by Mr. Marston himself, as well as his reserved and wayward temper, it might be better for Charles to avoid presenting himself to his father on this occasion.  A few seconds afterwards the door opened, and Mr. Marston entered the apartment.  It was now dark, and the servant, unbidden, placed candles upon the table.  Without answering one word to Dr. Danvers’ greeting, Marston sat down, as it seemed, in agitated abstraction.  Removing his hat suddenly (for he had not even made this slight homage to the laws of courtesy), he looked round with a care-worn, fiery eye, and a pale countenance, and said—­