“I thank God that I hear you say so.”

“But you are not satisfied, Charles.  I can read it on your face.  You wish to know why an innocent man should conceal himself for all these years.”

“Your word is enough for me, Ned; but the world will wish this other question answered also.”

“It was to save the family honour, Charles.  You know how dear it was to me.  I could not clear myself without proving my brother to have been guilty of the foulest crime which a gentleman could commit.  For eighteen years I have screened him at the expense of everything which a man could sacrifice.  I have lived a living death which has left me an old and shattered man when I am but in my fortieth year.  But now when I am faced with the alternative of telling the facts about my brother, or of wronging my son, I can only act in one fashion, and the more so since I have reason to hope that a way may be found by which what I am now about to disclose to you need never come to the public ear.”

He rose from his chair, and leaning heavily upon his two supporters, he tottered across the room to the dust-covered sideboard.  There, in the centre of it, was lying that ill-boding pile of time-stained, mildewed cards, just as Boy Jim and I had seen them years before.  Lord Avon turned them over with trembling fingers, and then picking up half a dozen, he brought them to my uncle.

“Place your finger and thumb upon the left-hand bottom corner of this card, Charles,” said he.  “Pass them lightly backwards and forwards, and tell me what you feel.”

“It has been pricked with a pin.”

“Precisely.  What is the card?”

My uncle turned it over.

“It is the king of clubs.”

“Try the bottom corner of this one.”

“It is quite smooth.”

“And the card is?”

“The three of spades.”

“And this one?”

“It has been pricked.  It is the ace of hearts.”  Lord Avon hurled them down upon the floor.

“There you have the whole accursed story!” he cried.  “Need I go further where every word is an agony?”

“I see something, but not all.  You must continue, Ned.”

The frail figure stiffened itself, as though he were visibly bracing himself for an effort.

“I will tell it you, then, once and for ever.  Never again, I trust, will it be necessary for me to open my lips about the miserable business.  You remember our game.  You remember how we lost.  You remember how you all retired, and left me sitting in this very room, and at that very table.  Far from being tired, I was exceedingly wakeful, and I remained here for an hour or more thinking over the incidents of the game and the changes which it promised to bring about in my fortunes.  I had, as you will recollect, lost heavily, and my only consolation was that my own brother had won.  I knew that, owing to his reckless mode of life, he was firmly in