my life, when I was
prostrate and helpless, you were pitiless as Pride. Listen, mother:
Winifred Wynne shall be mine. Not all the Aylwins that have ever
eaten of wheat and fattened the worms shall prevent that. She shall
be mine. I say, she shall be mine!'

'The daughter of the man who desecrated my husband's tomb!'

'And my father's! That man's daughter shall be my wife,' I said,
sitting up in bed and looking into those eyes, bright and proud,
which had been wont to make all other eyes blink and quail.

'Cursed by your father, and cursed by God--'

'That curse--for what it may be worth--I take upon my own head; the
curse shall be mine. Even if I believed the threat about the
"desolate places," I would be there; if bare-footed she had to beg
from door to door, rest assured, mother, that an Aylwin would hold
the wallet--would leave the whole Aylwin brood, their rank, their
money, and their stupid, vulgar British pride, to walk beside the
beggar.'

The look on my mother's face would have terrified most people. It
would have terrified me once, but in the frenzy into which I had then
passed, nothing would have made me quail.

'Your services, mother, are no longer needed,' I said. 'Wynne's
corpse might have been washed up by the tide, and your compact was to
be there to see; but now, most likely, it is hidden, not under the
loose fragments as I had feared, but under the great mass of
earth,--hidden for ever.'

'But you forget,' said my mother, 'that the amulet has to be
recovered.'

'Mother,' I said, in the state of wild suspiciousness concerning her
and her motives into which I had now passed, 'I know what your words
imply,--that Winifred is not yet out of danger; the evidence of the
curse and the crime can be dug up.'

'I have no wish to harm the girl, Henry. You mistake me.'

'Then, mother, we must _not_ mistake each other in this matter,' I
said. 'You have alluded to the word of an Aylwin. With me, as with
the best of us, the word of an Aylwin is an oath. Wynne's corpse is
now hidden; the cross is now hidden; I give you the word of an Aylwin
that the man who digs up that corpse I will kill. I will not consider
that he is an irresponsible agent of yours; I will kill him, and his
blood shall be upon the head of her who sends him, knowing, to his
death.'

'And be hanged,' said my mother.

'Perhaps. But after her father's crime has been exposed, the first
thing for me is--to kill!'

'Why, boy, there's mur