ith the one idea, he vehemently demanded, 'In Heaven's name,
have you come to tell me all you know?'

'Well, maybe--no,' answered the clerk: 'I don't know; I'll tell you
something. I'm going, you see, and I came here on my way; and I'll tell
you more than last time, but not all--not all yet.'

'Going? and where?--what are your plans?'

'Plans?--I've _no_ plans. Where am I going!--nowhere--anywhere. I'm
going away, that's all.'

'You're leaving this place--eh, to return no more?'

'I'm leaving it to-night; I've the doctor's leave, Parson Walsingham.
What d'ye look at, Sir? d'ye think it's what I murdered any one? not but
if I stayed here I might though,' and Mr. Irons laughed a frightened,
half maniacal sort of laugh. 'I'm going for a bit, a fortnight, or so,
maybe, till things get quiet--(lead us not into temptation!)--to
Mullingar, or anywhere; only I won't stay longer at hell's door, within
stretch of that devil's long arm.'

'Come to the parlour,' said Mervyn, perceiving that Irons was chilled
and shivering.

There, with the door and window-shutters closed, a pair of candles on
the table, and a couple of faggots of that pleasant bog-wood, which
blazes so readily and fragrantly on the hearth, Irons shook off his
cloak, and stood, lank and grim, and, as it seemed to Mervyn, horribly
scared, but well in view, and trying, sullenly, to collect his thoughts.

'I'm going away, I tell you, for a little while; but I'm come to see
you, Sir, to think what I may tell you now, and above all, to warn you
again' saying to any living soul one word of what passed between us when
I last was here; you've kept your word honourable as yet; if you break
it I'll not return,' and he clenched it with an oath, 'I _daren't_
return.'

'I'll tell you the way it happened,' he resumed. ''Tis a good while now,
ay twenty-two years; your noble father's dead these twenty-two years and
upwards. 'Twas a bad murdher, Sir: they wor both bad murdhers. I look on
it, _he's_ a murdhered man.'

'He--who?' demanded the young man.

'Your father, Sir.'

'My father murdered?' said Mervyn.

'Well, I see no great differ; I see none at all. I'll tell you how it
was.'

And he looked over his shoulder again, and into the corners of the room,
and then Mr. Irons began--

'I believe, Sir, there's no devil like a vicious young man, with a hard
heart and cool courage, in want of money. Of all the men I ever met
with, or heard tell of, Charles Archer was