“Dear Archelaus,” it began—­Phoebe would never have suffered sufficiently from a sense of fitness to alter the conventional beginning, whatever the stress under which she wrote—­“I have done it, and now he need never know unless you tell him, and you won’t ever, will you, dear, dear Archelaus?  Please promise me.”

“Did you promise?” was all Ishmael’s voice asked.

Archelaus stirred a little in the bed.

“I promised never to hurt her by tellen’ ’ee,” he said.  There was a moment of silence, and then he broke into vehement speech.  Even his voice had gathered strength; it was as though in the full flood of what was sweeping out of him, after being dammed for so many years, all physical disabilities were washed away.

“Aw, what do ’ee think I ded it for?” he asked; “for love of Phoebe?  Her!...  I could have got as good at any brothel to Penzance....  It wasn’t for love I ded it; it was for hate.  Hate of ’ee, Ishmael!  To get my revenge, and for you not to knaw till it was too late, much too late, to cast her off or the child.  I wanted to wait till the boy should be the warld to ’ee ... till he had grown as your own soul, and you saw his son ready to come after him and thought it was your own flesh and blood you was leaving behind you, and you too old to leave any other....  Cloom’s been yours all your life, but when you and I are both on us dead and rotting, it’ll be I and not you who’s living on at Cloom.  So ’tes mine, after all, not yours....”

A moment later and the triumphant voice went on again.

“There’s another letter,” it said, “from your old Parson.  I wrote to he after I’d met Nicky—­my son—­casual-like once in Canada.  That’s what he answered.”

Again Ishmael picked up the letter, almost mechanically, and read: 

“I have received your letter dated July, 1891.  I cannot find words to write to you as I would wish.  If what you tell me is true—­and I do not think you could have invented the letters of which you send me copies—­it would matter very little if I found the pen of men and of angels to tell you what I thought.  I can only tell you that even if the wish is wicked I hope with all my heart, and pray it too, that you may never be allowed to come home to tell your brother what it is in your heart to tell him.  That the boy may never in his turn have a son to gratify you with the sight of your grandchild at Cloom.  That this weapon you have forged against your brother may be under Providence to your own undoing.  And since the ways of God are mysterious—­though I am tempted to say not as past finding out as the ways of man—­even if you carry out your threat it may be that Ishmael will be given strength to withstand the horror of what you tell him, and that the Lord has a comfort for him in ways you could not understand, so that you will be robbed of all but an empty victory....”