"

"I never did any thing of the sort. It was done in my name, but not by
me; I never even heard of it until long after, and I have a score to
settle with the man who did it."

"But Mr. Goad told me himself that you came and said you were the true
Lord Castlewood, and ordered him at once to America. I never saw truth
more plainly stamped on a new situation--the face of a rogue--than I saw
it then on the face of Mr. Goad."

"You are quite right; he spoke the truth--to the utmost of his
knowledge. I never saw Goad, and he never saw me. I never even dreamed
of pretending to the title. I was personated by a mean, low friend of
Sir Montague Hockin; base-born as I am, I would never stoop to such a
trick. You will find out the meaning of that by-and-by. I have taken
the law into my own hands--it is the only way to work such laws--I
have committed what is called a crime. But, compared with Sir Montague
Hockin, I am whiter than yonder shearling on his way to the river for
his evening drink."

I gazed at his face, and could well believe it. The setting sun shone
upon his chin and forehead--good, resolute, well-marked features; his
nose and mouth were keen and clear, his cheeks curt and pale (though
they would have been better for being a trifle cleaner). There was
nothing suggestive of falsehood or fraud, and but for the wildness
of the eyes and flashes of cold ferocity, it might have been called a
handsome face.

"Very well," he began again, with one of those jerks which had
frightened me, "your father was kind to me, very kind indeed; but he
knew the old lord too well to attempt to interpose on my behalf. On
the other hand, he gave no warning of my manifest resolve; perhaps he
thought it a woman's threat, and me no better than a woman! And partly
for his sake, no doubt, though mainly for my mother's, I made the short
work which I made; for he was horribly straitened--and in his free,
light way he told me so--by his hard curmudgeon of a father.

"To that man, hopeless as he was, I gave fair grace, however, and
plenty of openings for repentance. None of them would he embrace, and he
thought scorn of my lenity. And I might have gone on with such weakness
longer, if I had not heard that his coach-and-four was ordered for the
Moonstock Inn.

"That he should dare thus to pollute the spot where he had so forsworn
himself! I resolved that there he should pay justice, either with his
life or death. And I went to your father's p