ject, but Dudley said:

"I would rather explain now, once and for all. I shall be going away
to-morrow, and there are several things which I should like to make
clear first." He paused, and Mrs. Wedmore, her daughters and the nurse
took the opportunity to leave the room. "Now, Mr. Wedmore, tell me what
you want to know."

"Well, you told us nothing about your father's being alive and back in
England, for one thing."

"It was by his wish that I kept it a secret. He persisted that he was
sane; he seemed to be sane. But he believed that if it were known that
he was in England he would be shut up."

"But the passing himself off as an old woman, this living in a sort of
underground way, didn't that look like madness?"

"I took it for eccentricity and nothing more, until--until he sent for
me one day, and brought me suddenly into a room--a little dark, bare
room--where there was a man lying on the ground asleep, as I thought. My
father told me to bring him into the next room, and--when I stooped to
touch him"--Dudley shuddered at the ghastly recollection--"my hands were
covered with blood."

"Good gracious! He had murdered him?"

"Yes. And from that time he seemed a different man. I saw that he was
mad. I tried to persuade him to give himself up, to let himself be put
under restraint. I laid traps for him, trying to take him to an asylum.
But he was too cunning for me, and all I got by it was to rouse in him a
bitter feeling of hatred of myself."

"Why didn't you give information--to the police, if necessary?"

"How could I? My own father! I believed he would be hanged if he was
caught. I believe so still. The last time I saw him he seemed sane,
except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who,
it seems, is my half-sister. But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on
the head, and tried to drown me. There, now you know as much as I do.
Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends,
with such a burden as that on my mind?"

Mr. Wedmore was silent for a time.

"Poor lad!" he said at last. "Poor lad! I think you might have found
some better way out of it than holding your tongue and shutting yourself
up from all your friends; but, on the other hand, it was a jolly
difficult position. Jolly difficult! And so you never even told Max?"

"No, though I more than once felt inclined to. But it was such a ghastly
business altogether that I thought I'd better hold my tongue, espec