“Yes, I knew you would all shrink from me when you knew,” went on Sydney.  He spoke in a voice that was almost hard now.  It was as if it had become so from the spurring that was necessary to enable him to make his confession.  “I shrank from myself as soon as the last piece of tinder had vanished from the candlestick.  I could not bear to stay in the house.  I hurried off to the undertaker’s, and then stopped at Dr. Martin’s to tell him that the miser was dead.

“He said something about the good fortune that had come to us so quickly.  I shuddered and hurried home.  But I could not sleep.  I seemed to have become an old man in that one instant while I held that sheet of paper in the flame of the candle.”

“That’s the reason we did not see you at breakfast the next morning?” said Roy softly.

“Yes, I felt that I could not face you all just yet.”

“And that is why you looked so terrible and fainted away when I told Scott Bowman about our inheritance at your office?” added Rex.

“Yes; I was planning all sorts of ways to fix things, so we needn’t take the money.  Then I saw it was too late.  Now you know what has been on my mind all these months.  I knew that my health was being undermined by the strain.  But I did not care for that.  I even hoped at times that I might die, because then I felt that you need never know.”

“And—­ and was it anything in particular that made you tell us to-night?” asked Rex.

“Yes.  It seems very strange how things come about, but then it often happens so.  Do you remember, Reggi—­ Rex, telling me the name of the man who left your friend Miles with the Morriseys’?”

“Yes, and it was Darley, the same name you mentioned just now.  And you fainted then, just as you did that time at the office.  You don’t mean that Miles—­”

“Yes, I am almost certain that Miles Morrisey is really a Darley, the son of Maurice Darley, to whom all this money belongs.  When I suspected this I knew that the end had come—­ that I must trace the thing down and confess.”

At this point the carriage halted before the door of the house.  Rex sprang out, then Roy, and both boys waited to help Sydney.  But he made no movement to follow them.

“Aren’t you going to get out, Syd?” asked Roy.

“No; I have no right to live among you any more.  Now that you know, it will seem like having a convict in the house.  I can go to some hotel.  You can send my things to me and I will stay there till—­ till this is settled up and they put me away.”

Roy stepped into the carriage and put his face so close to Sydney’s that the latter felt the smooth flesh against his day’s growth of beard.

“Dear old fellow,” whispered Roy, “you must come.  We haven’t cast you off.  And—­ and besides, we want you with us to help us decide what to do.”

“Don’t be so good to me, Roy.  I can’t bear it.”

But as he spoke, Sydney got out, and the three went up the steps.