’Twas late when I awoke the next day with something of a dull ache in my neck, and a prodigious stiffness, studying the pleatings of the bed canopy over my head.  And I know not how long I lay idly thus when I perceived Mrs. Willis moving quietly about, and my grandfather sitting in the armchair by the window, looking into Freshwater Lane.  As my eyes fell upon him my memory came surging back,—­first of the duel, then of its cause.  And finally, like a leaden weight, the thought of the deception I had practised upon him, of which he must have learned ere this.  Nay, I was sure from the troubled look of his face that he knew of it.

“Mr. Carvel,” I said.

At the sound of my voice he got hastily from his chair and hurried to my side.

“Richard,” he answered, taking my hand, “Richard!”

I opened my mouth to speak, to confess.  But he prevented me, the tears filling the wrinkles around his eyes.

“Nay, lad, nay.  We will not talk of it.  I know all.”

“Mr. Allen has been here—­” I began.

“And be d—­d to him!  Be d—­d to him for a wolf in sheep’s clothing!” shouted my grandfather, his manner shifting so suddenly to anger that I was taken back.  “So help me God I will never set foot in St. Anne’s while he is rector.  Nor shall he come to this house!”

And he took three or four disorderly turns about the room.

“Ah!” he continued more quietly, with something of a sigh, “I might have known how stubborn your mind should be.  That you was never one to blow from the north one day and from the south the next.  I deny not that there be good men and able of your way of thinking:  Colonel Washington, for one, whom I admire and honour; and our friend Captain Daniel.  They have been here to-day, Richard, and I promise you were good advocates.”

Then I knew that I was forgiven.  And I could have thrown myself at Mr. Carvel’s feet for happiness.

“Has Colonel Washington spoken in my favour, sir?”

“That he has.  He is upon some urgent business for the North, I believe, which he delayed for your sake.  Both he and the captain were in my dressing-room before I was up, ahead of that scurrilous clergyman, who was for pushing his way to my bed-curtains.  Ay, the two of them were here at nigh dawn this morning, and Mr. Allen close after them.  And I own that Captain Daniel can swear with such a consuming violence as to put any rogue out of countenance.  ’Twas all Mr. Washington could do to restrain Clapsaddle from booting his Reverence over the balustrade and down two runs of the stairs, the captain declaring he would do for every cur’s son of the whelps.  ‘Diomedes,’ says I, waking up, ’what’s this damnable racket on the landing?  Is Mr. Richard home?’ For I had some notion it was you, sir, after an over-night brawl.  And I profess I would have caned you soundly.  The fellow answered that Captain Clapsaddle’s honour was killing Mr. Allen, and went out; and came back presently to say that some tall gentleman had the captain by the neck, and that Mr. Allen was picking his way down the ice on the steps outside.  With that I went in to them in my dressing-gown.