"Fourthly.  That the partially consumed match found on the scullery floor when the body was discovered (a style of match not used in the house in Welch’s Court) completes the complement of a box of safety-matches belonging to Richard Shackford, and hidden in a closet in his workshop.

“Whether Shackford had an accomplice or not is yet to be ascertained.  There is nothing whatever to implicate Mr. Rowland Slocum.  I make the statement because his intimate association with one party and his deep dislike of the other invited inquiry, and at first raised an unjust suspicion in my mind.”

The little red book slipped from Mr. Slocum’s grasp and fell at his feet.  As he rose from the chair, the reflection which he caught of himself in the dressing-table mirror was that of a wrinkled, white old man.

Mr. Slocum did not believe, and no human evidence could have convinced him, that Richard had deliberately killed Lemuel Shackford; but as Mr. Slocum reached the final pages of the diary, a horrible probability insinuated itself in his mind.  Could Richard have done it accidentally?  Could he—­in an instant of passion, stung to sudden madness by that venomous old man—­have struck him involuntarily, and killed him?  A certain speech which Richard had made in Mr. Slocum’s presence not long before came back to him now with fearful emphasis:—­

"Three or four times in my life I have been carried away by a devil of a temper which I couldn’t control, it seized me so unawares."

“It seized me so unawares!” repeated Mr. Slocum, half aloud; and then with a swift, unconscious gesture, he pressed his hands over his ears, as if to shut out the words.

XXI

Margaret must be told.  It would be like stabbing her to tell her all this.  Mr. Slocum had lain awake long after midnight, appalled by the calamity that was about to engulf them.  At moments, as his thought reverted to Margaret’s illness early in the spring, he felt that perhaps it would have been a mercy if she had died then.  He had left the candles burning; it was not until the wicks sunk down in the sockets and went softly out that slumber fell upon him.

He was now sitting at the breakfast-table, absently crumbling bits of bread beside his plate and leaving his coffee untouched.  Margaret glanced at him wistfully from time to time, and detected the restless night in the deepened lines of his face.

The house had not been the same since Lemuel Shackford’s death; he had never crossed its threshold; Margaret had scarcely known him by sight, and Mr. Slocum had not spoken to him for years; but Richard’s connection with the unfortunate old man had brought the tragic event very close to Margaret and her father.  Mr. Slocum was a person easily depressed, but his depression this morning was so greatly in excess of the presumable cause that Margaret began to be troubled.