“Laurence Darrant.  “January the 28th, about ten o’clock p.m.”

Full five minutes Keith stood with those sheets of paper in his hand, while the clock ticked, the wind moaned a little in the trees outside, the flames licked the logs with the quiet click and ruffle of their intense far-away life down there on the hearth.  Then he roused himself, and sat down to read the whole again.

There it was, just as Larry had told it to him-nothing left out, very clear; even to the addresses of people who could identify the girl as having once been Walenn’s wife or mistress.  It would convince.  Yes!  It would convince.

The sheets dropped from his hand.  Very slowly he was grasping the appalling fact that on the floor beside his chair lay the life or death of yet another man; that by taking this confession he had taken into his own hands the fate of the vagabond lying under sentence of death; that he could not give him back his life without incurring the smirch of this disgrace, without even endangering himself.  If he let this confession reach the authorities, he could never escape the gravest suspicion that he had known of the whole affair during these two months.  He would have to attend the inquest, be recognised by that policeman as having come to the archway to see where the body had lain, as having visited the girl the very evening after the murder.  Who would believe in the mere coincidence of such visits on the part of the murderer’s brother.  But apart from that suspicion, the fearful scandal which so sensational an affair must make would mar his career, his life, his young daughter’s life!  Larry’s suicide with this girl would make sensation enough as it was; but nothing to that other.  Such a death had its romance; involved him in no way save as a mourner, could perhaps even be hushed up!  The other—­nothing could hush that up, nothing prevent its ringing to the house-tops.  He got up from his chair, and for many minutes roamed the room unable to get his mind to bear on the issue.  Images kept starting up before him.  The face of the man who handed him wig and gown each morning, puffy and curious, with a leer on it he had never noticed before; his young daughter’s lifted eyebrows, mouth drooping, eyes troubled; the tiny gilt crucifix glinting in the hollow of the dead girl’s arm; the sightless look in Larry’s unclosed eyes; even his own thumb and finger pulling the lids down.  And then he saw a street and endless people passing, turning to stare at him.  And, stopping in his tramp, he said aloud:  “Let them go to hell!  Seven days’ wonder!” Was he not trustee to that confession!  Trustee!  After all he had done nothing to be ashamed of, even if he had kept knowledge dark.  A brother!  Who could blame him?  And he picked up those sheets of paper.  But, like a great murky hand, the scandal spread itself about him; its coarse malignant voice seemed shouting:  “Paiper!...  Paiper!...