u."

"What!" uttered Lionel.

"True," nodded John, with composure. "I told him a--a bit of scandal of
you. And the strait-laced old simpleton took and altered his will on the
strength of it. I did not know of that until afterwards."

"And the scandal?" asked Lionel quietly. "What may it have been?"

"False scandal," carelessly answered John Massingbird. "But I thought it
was true when I spoke it. I told your uncle that it was you who had
played false with Rachel Frost."

"Massingbird!"

"Don't fancy I went to him open-mouthed, and said, 'Lionel Verner's the
man.' A fellow who could do such a sneaking trick would be only fit for
hanging. The avowal to him was surprised from me in an unguarded moment;
it slipped out in self-defence. I'd better tell you the tale."

"I think you had," said Lionel.

"You remember the bother there was, the commotion, the night Rachel was
drowned. I came home and found Mr. Verner sitting at the inquiry. It
never struck me, then, to suspect that it could be any one of us three
who had been in the quarrel with Rachel. I knew that I had had no finger
in the pie; I had no cause to think that you had; and, as to Fred, I'd
as soon have suspected staid old Verner himself; besides, I believed
Fred to have eyes only for Sibylla West. Not but that the affair
appeared to me unaccountably strange; for, beyond Verner's Pride, I did
not think Rachel possessed an acquaintance."

He stopped to take a few whiffs at his pipe, and then resumed, Lionel
listening in silence.

"On the following morning by daylight I went down to the pond, the scene
of the previous night. A few stragglers were already there. As we were
looking about and talking, I saw on the very brink of the pond,
partially hidden in the grass--in fact trodden into it, as it seemed to
me--a glove. I picked it up, and was on the point of calling out that I
had found a glove, when it struck me that the glove was yours. The
others had seen me stoop, and one of them asked if I had found anything.
I said 'No.' I had crushed the glove in my hand, and presently I
transferred it to my pocket."

"Your motive being good-nature to me?" interrupted Lionel.

"To be sure it was. To have shown that as Lionel Verner's glove, would
have fixed the affair on your shoulders at once. Why should I tell? I
had been in scrapes myself. And I kept it, saying nothing to anybody. I
examined the glove privately, saw it was really yours, and, of course, I
drew my