“So it was Father who told you that I was dead, eh?”

“Four years ago, David; ay, and more than that.”

“He was a very hard man,” David Strong said.  “Four years ago I wrote to him—­I had a chance—­I wanted a few pounds only, to make a decent appearance.  That was his answer.  To me there came none.”

“He did what he believed to be right,” Joan said.  “You disobeyed him in going away.”

“It is true,” he answered.

The man began to move about the room, glancing every now and then towards the door with a certain restlessness.  He had come once more under the influence of the one person who in his earlier life had always dominated him.  She had brought him along, unwilling and feebly protesting.  He began to wonder how he should get away.

“You will stay here, David,” she said.  “You have not yet seen Cicely.”

He shook his head.

“No.  I am not fit for the company of respectable people.  You do not know how low I have fallen.  I have lost my caste.  I live only for one purpose.  When that is accomplished I mean to die.”

“That is very foolish talk for a man,” she remarked calmly.  “I, too, have a purpose in life, but when it is accomplished I mean to live on, to live more fully.”

He smiled mockingly.

“There is yet nothing of kinship between us,” he said, “for between your purpose and mine there could be no more comparison than between a street puddle and Feldwick Farm.  It is a life I seek.”

“I would to God, David,” she cried fiercely, “that it were the same life.  For at the end of my purpose is death.”

He gazed at her speechless.  For the first time the change in her was brought home to him.  The stern lines in her face had become rigid and cruel, a new light shone in her eyes.  Joan, the domineering, had become Joan the tragical.  He listened to her fascinated—­and his limbs shook with fear.

“Can you wonder what it is, David?  You have tasted the bitterness of strange happenings, and you have almost forgotten your name and whence you came.  It is your task which I have made mine.  Yet it is not too late for you, if you will help.”

“Speak out,” he whispered, hoarsely.

“You knew of Father’s death?”

“You knew that he was robbed and murdered?”

The man who was lurking so far as he could in the shadows of the room said nothing—­but his eyes seemed to become like balls of red fire, and his livid cheeks were horrible to look upon.  Even Joan was startled.

“You knew of these things, David?” she cried.

“Ay,” he answered, “I knew.  What of it?”

“Can you ask?  You have drifted far away from us, David, yet you, too, are a Strong and the last of our race.  He was murdered, and as yet the man who slew him goes unpunished.  Can you ask me then what should be the purpose of my life?  It is to see him hang.”

She had risen to her feet, a grim, threatening figure in the unshaded lamplight.  The yellow glare fell upon her hard, set face, her tightly compressed lips and black eyebrows.  Of a sudden David realised her strange and wonderful likeness to the dead man.  His own bloodless lips parted, and the room rang with horrid laughter, surely the laughter of a lunatic.