‘Belike you’re mad, Sir,’ answered Irons, in a grim, ugly tone, but with face unmoved. ’’Twas not a light matter brought me here—­a message—­there—­well!—­your right honourable father, that lies in lead and oak, without a name on his coffin-lid, would have you to know that what he said was—­as it should be—­and I can prove it—­’

’What?—­he said what?—­what is it?—­what can you prove?  Speak out, Sirrah!’ and his eyes shone white in the moonlight, and his hand was advanced towards Irons’s throat, and he looked half beside himself, and trembling all over.

‘Put down your hand or you hear no more from me,’ said Irons, also a little transformed.

Mervyn silently lowered his hand clenched by his side, and, with compressed lips, nodded an impatient sign to him.

’Yes, Sir, he’d have you to understand he never did it, and I can prove it—­but I won’t!’

That moment, something glittered in Mervyn’s hand, and he strode towards Irons, overturning a chair with a crash.

‘I have you—­come on and you’re a dead man,’ said the clerk, in a hoarse voice, drawing into the deep darkness toward the door, with the dull gleam of a pistol-barrel just discernible in his extended hand.

‘Stay—­don’t go,’ cried Mervyn, in a piercing voice; ’I conjure—­I implore—­whatever you are, come back—­see, I’m unarmed,’ (and he flung his sword back toward the window).

’You young gentlemen are always for drawing upon poor bodies—­how would it have gone if I had not looked to myself, Sir, and come furnished?’ said Irons, in his own level tone.

’I don’t know—­I don’t care—­I don’t care if I were dead.  Yes, yes, ‘tis true, I almost wish he had shot me.’

‘Mind, Sir, you’re on honour,’ said the clerk, in his old tone, as he glided slowly back, his right hand in his coat pocket, and his eye with a quiet suspicion fixed upon Mervyn, and watching his movements.

’I don’t know what or who you are, but if ever you knew what human feeling is—­I say, if you are anything at all capable of compassion, you will kill me at a blow rather than trifle any longer with the terrible hope that has been my torture—­I believe my insanity, all my life.’

‘Well, Sir,’ said Irons, mildly, and with that serene suspicion of a smile on his face, ’if you wish to talk to me you must take me different; for, to say truth, I was nearer killing you that time than you were aware, and all the time I mean you no harm! and yet, if I thought you were going to say to anybody living, Zekiel Irons, the clerk, was here on Tuesday night, I believe I’d shoot you now.’

’You wish your visit secret? well, you have my honour, no one living shall hear of it,’ said Mervyn.  ‘Go on.’

’I’ve little to say, your honour; but, first, do you think your servants heard the noise just now?’

’The old woman’s deaf, and her daughter dare not stir after night-fall.  You need fear no interruption.’