wn life were quaking with guilt under the spell of
this staring presence. In the state of horrified sympathy to which it
had precipitated him, he morbidly felt almost responsible for the
brooding evil in the boy as well as aghast at it. But even this sense of
sin, implying as it did a skeleton of naked, primal right and wrong
seemed of small import to his astounded mind beside the nameless,
unmentionable sorrow that pervaded the face and stabbed at Henry
Montagu's heart. He knew without question that he was looking at
tragedy--worse than he had supposed the world could hold or any human
thing, in any world, be subject to. It was a man's face in every line
and poise and suggestion, but for all its frightful knowledge he had to
call it beautiful--the clear-cut word "handsome" ran away from it like a
mouse into a hole, leaving it a superb horror that, as soon as his
paralyzed muscles could respond to his instinct, drove his hand to his
face to shut away the deliberate, searching gaze.

"Done?" answered the young fellow at last. "What have I done? _Good
God!_"

For the third time, it was one of his own three exclamations totally new
to him that night, and the coincidence drove home to him, this time,
with a sense of omen. But his guest was speaking again, and, forcing
himself to look calmly at the tragic face he listened breathlessly.

"I've done a thing never accomplished in human life before, a thing
more terrific than the world's entire history, from the moment of the
first atom crawling on it has ever known!"

He could not have spoken more solemnly and convincingly if he had
reverently murdered, one by one, a whole nation of people, and it was
some such picture that came into Henry Montagu's mind as, shivering and
fascinated, he watched him and listened.

But the young man said no more.

"If--if you will tell me what you've done," said Mr. Montagu haltingly,
his pity sweeping every caution away, "or simply what you want of me, I
will do anything for you that I possibly can."

"There is nothing in this world," answered the boy wearily, "that
anybody can do for me." But suddenly, impulsively, he added: "There is
just one thing, that you can do--not for me, but for yourself. Don't ask
me questions. For your own sake don't!"

"But--" began Mr. Montagu.

"If you knew who I am or what I am, and what I've deliberately done,"
cried the boy, "you'd curse this night, and curse me, the longest day
you lived! What--what