“No, I will show you no mercy,” he answered quietly, “for I have sworn to show no mercy to your race, and you are the last of it.  But listen, that for a few moments before you die you may shake off your smug complacency and learn what this wealth is, and what kind of brood you Trenoweths are.  Dog!  The treasure that lies by Dead Man’s Rock is treasure weighted with dead men’s curses and stained with dead men’s blood—­wealth won by black piracy upon the high seas—­gold for which many a poor soul walked the plank and found his end in the deep waters.  It is treasure sacked from many a gallant ship, stripped from many a rotting corpse by that black hound your grandfather, Amos Trenoweth.  You guessed that?  Let me tell you more.

“There is many a soul crying in heaven and hell for vengeance on your race; but your death to-night, Jasper Trenoweth, shall be the peculiar joy of one.  You guessed that your grandfather had crimes upon his soul; but you did not guess the blackest crime on his account—­the murder of his dearest friend.  Listen.  I will be brief with you, but I cannot spare myself the joy of letting you know this much before you die.  Know then that when your grandfather was a rich man by this friend’s aid—­after, with this friend’s help, he had laid hands on the secret of the Great Ruby for which for many a year he had thirsted, in the moment of his triumph he turned and slew that friend in order to keep the Ruby to himself.

“That fool, your father, kept a Journal—­which no doubt you have read over and over again.  Did he tell you how I caught him upon Adam’s Peak, sitting with this clasp in his hands before a hideous, graven stone?  That stone was cut in ghastly mockery of that friend’s face; the bones that lay beneath it were the bones of that friend.  There, on that very spot where I met your father face to face, did his father, Amos Trenoweth, strike down my father Ralph Colliver.

“Ah, light is beginning to dawn on your silly brain at last!  Yes, pretending to protect the old priest who had the Ruby, he stabbed my father with the very knife found in your father’s heart, stabbed him before his wife’s eyes on that little lawn upon the mountain-side; and, when my helpless mother called vengeance upon him, handed the still reeking knife to her and bade her do her worst.  Ah, but she kept that knife.  Did you mark what was engraved upon the blade?  That knife had a good memory, Mr. Jasper Trenoweth.

“Let me go on.  As if that deed were not foul enough, he caused the old priest to carve—­being skilful with the chisel—­that vile distortion of his dead friend’s face out of a huge boulder lying by, and then murdered him too for the Ruby’s sake, and tumbled their bodies into the trough together.  Such was Amos Trenoweth.  Are you proud of your descent?

“I never saw my father.  I was not born until three months after this, and not until I was ten years old did my mother tell me of his fate.