for your half
crowns! We must have a little of what you have grudged--having none to
spare--your honor. My demands are simple, and only two. My mother is
fool enough to yearn for one more sight of your false face; you will
come with me and see her.'

"'And if I yield to that, what next?'

"'The next thing is a trifle to a nobleman like you. Here I have, in
this blue trinket (false gems and false gold, of course), your solemn
signature to a lie. At the foot of that you will have the truth to
write, "I am a perjured liar!" and proudly sign it "Castlewood," in the
presence of two witnesses. This can not hurt your feelings much, and it
need not be expensive.'

"Fury flashed in his bright old eyes, but he strove to check its
outbreak. The gleaning of life, after threescore years, was better, in
such lordly fields, than the whole of the harvest we got. He knew that I
had him all to myself, to indulge my filial affection.

"'You have been misled; you have never heard the truth; you have only
heard your mother's story. Allow me to go back and to sit in a dry
place; I am tired, and no longer young; you are bound to hear my tale as
well. I passed a dry stump just now; I will go back: there is no fear of
interruption.' My lord was talking against time.

"'From this bridge you do not budge until you have gone on your knees
and sworn what I shall dictate to you; this time it shall be no perjury.
Here I hold your cursed pledge--'

"He struck at me, or at the locket--no matter which--but it flew away.
My right arm was crippled by his heavy stick; but I am left-handed, as a
bastard should be. From my left hand he took his death, and I threw the
pistol after him: such love had he earned from his love-child!"

Thomas Castlewood, or Hoyle, or whatever else his name was, here broke
off from his miserable words, and, forgetting all about my presence, set
his gloomy eyes on the ground. Lightly he might try to speak, but there
was no lightness in his mind, and no spark of light in his poor dead
soul. Being so young, and unacquainted with the turns of life-worn mind,
I was afraid to say a word except to myself, and to myself I only said,
"The man is mad, poor fellow; and no wonder!"

The sun was setting, not upon the vast Pacific from desert heights, but
over the quiet hills and through the soft valleys of tame England; and,
different as the whole scene was, a certain other sad and fearful sunset
lay before me: the fall of night upon