l meaning.

"Walter," he repeated vaguely. "Walter."

His thoughts, that had seemed as frozen by the sudden shock of the
tremendous revelation so unconsciously made to him by Ella, began to
stir and move again, and almost at once, with an extraordinary and
abnormal rapidity.

As a drowning man is said to see flash before his eyes the whole history
and record of his life, so now Dunn saw the whole story of his life-long
friendship with Walter pictured before him.

For when he was very small, Walter had been to him like an elder
brother, and when he was older, it was Walter who had taught him to
ride and to shoot, to hunt and to fish, and when he was at school it was
Walter to whom he looked up as the dashing young man of the world, who
knew all life's secrets, and when he was at college it was Walter who
had helped him out of the inevitable foolish scrapes into which it is
the custom of the undergraduate to fall.

Then, when he had come to man's estate, Walter had still been his
confidential friend and adviser. In Walter's hand he had been accustomed
to leave everything during his absences on his hunting and exploring
trips; and at what time during this long and kindly association of
good-fellowship had such black hate and poison of envy bred in Walter's
heart?

"Walter!" he said aloud once more, and he uttered the name as though it
were a cry of anguish.

Yet, too, even in his utter bewilderment and surprise, it seemed strange
to him that he had never once suspected, never dreamed, never once had
the shadow of a suspicion.

Little things, trifling things, a word, an accent, a phrase that had
passed at the time for a lest, a thousand such memories came back to him
now with a new and terrible significance.

For, after all, Walter was in the direct line. Only just a few lives
stood between him and a great inheritance, a great position. Perhaps
long brooding on what might so easily be had made him mad.

Dunn remembered now, too, that it was Walter who had discovered that
first murderous attempt which had first put them on their guard, but
perhaps he had discovered it only because he knew of it, and when it
failed, saw his safest plan was to be foremost in tracking it out.

And it was Walter who had last seen poor Charley Wright alone, and far
from Bittermeads. But perhaps that was a lie to confuse the search for
the missing man, and a reason why that search had failed so utterly up
to the moment of Dunn's own