There, with the door and window-shutters closed, a pair of candles on the table, and a couple of faggots of that pleasant bog-wood, which blazes so readily and fragrantly on the hearth, Irons shook off his cloak, and stood, lank and grim, and, as it seemed to Mervyn, horribly scared, but well in view, and trying, sullenly, to collect his thoughts.

’I’m going away, I tell you, for a little while; but I’m come to see you, Sir, to think what I may tell you now, and above all, to warn you again’ saying to any living soul one word of what passed between us when I last was here; you’ve kept your word honourable as yet; if you break it I’ll not return,’ and he clenched it with an oath, ’I daren’t return.’

‘I’ll tell you the way it happened,’ he resumed. ’’Tis a good while now, ay twenty-two years; your noble father’s dead these twenty-two years and upwards.  ’Twas a bad murdher, Sir:  they wor both bad murdhers.  I look on it, he’s a murdhered man.’

‘He—­who?’ demanded the young man.

‘Your father, Sir.’

‘My father murdered?’ said Mervyn.

’Well, I see no great differ; I see none at all.  I’ll tell you how it was.’

And he looked over his shoulder again, and into the corners of the room, and then Mr. Irons began—­

’I believe, Sir, there’s no devil like a vicious young man, with a hard heart and cool courage, in want of money.  Of all the men I ever met with, or heard tell of, Charles Archer was the most dreadful.  I used sometimes to think he was the devil.  It wasn’t long-headed or cunning he was, but he knew your thoughts before you half knew them yourself.  He knew what every one was thinking of.  He made up his mind at a glance, and struck like a thunderbolt.  As for pity or fear, he did not know what they were, and his cunning was so deep and sure there was no catching him.

’He came down to the Pied Horse Inn, where I was a drawer, at Newmarket, twice.’

Mervyn looked in his face, quickly, with a ghastly kind of a start.

’Ay, Sir, av coorse you know it; you read the trial; av coorse you did.  Well, he came down there twice.  ’Twas a good old house, Sir, lots of room, and a well-accustomed inn.  An’ I think there was but two bad men among all the servants of the house—­myself and Glascock.  He was an under hostler, and a bad boy.  He chose us two out of the whole lot, with a look.  He never made a mistake.  He knew us some way like a crow knows carrion, and he used us cleverly.’

And Irons cursed him.

‘He’s a hard master, like his own,’ said Irons; ’his wages come to nothing, and his services is hell itself.  He could sing, and talk, and drink, and keep things stirring, and the gentlemen liked him; and he was, ’twas said, a wonderful fine player at whist, and piquet, and ombre, and all sorts of card-playing.  So you see he could afford to play fair.  The first time he came down, he fought three duels about a tipsy