r evidence yet remained, and it was reserved for Thornton to
indicate it; at this moment my life is in his hands. Shortly after my
return to town, he forced his way into my room, shut the door, bolted
it, and, the moment we were alone, said, with a savage and fiendish grin
of exultation and defiance, 'Sir Reginald Glanville, you have many a
time and oft insulted me with your pride, and more with your gifts: now
it is my time to insult and triumph over you; know that one word of mine
could sentence you to the gibbet.'

"He then minutely summed up the evidence against me, and drew from
his pocket the threatening letter I had last written to Tyrrell. You
remember that therein I said my vengeance was sworn against him, and
that, sooner or later, it should overtake him. 'Couple,' said Thornton,
coldly, as he replaced the letter in his pocket,--'couple these words
with the evidence already against you, and I would not buy your life at
a farthing's value.'

"How Thornton came by this paper, so important to my safety, I know not:
but when he read it I was startled by the danger it brought upon me;
one glance sufficed to show me that I was utterly at the mercy of the
villain who stood before me; he saw and enjoyed my struggles.

"'Now,' said he, 'we know each other: at present I want a thousand
pounds; you will not refuse it me, I am sure; when it is gone, I shall
call again; till then you can do without me.' I flung him a check for
the money, and he departed.

"You may conceive the mortification I endured in this sacrifice of pride
to prudence; but those were no ordinary motives which induced me to
submit to it. Fast approaching to the grave, it mattered to me but
little whether a violent death should shorten a life to which a limit
was already set, and which I was far from being anxious to retain: but
I could not endure the thought of bringing upon my mother and my sister
the wretchedness and shame which the mere suspicion of a crime
so enormous would occasion them; and when my eye caught all the
circumstances arrayed against me, my pride seemed to suffer a less
mortification even in the course I adopted than in the thought of the
felon's gaol and the criminal's trial,--the hoots and execrations of the
mob, and the death and ignominious remembrance of the murderer.

"Stronger than either of these motives was my shrinking and loathing
aversion to whatever seemed likely to unrip the secret history of the
past. I sickened at