responded
to my agonized effort. Her cold, clear 'No!' fell before my tongue was
loosed or my heart freed from the ponderous weight crushing it.

"'I have vowed and _I_ keep my promises,' she went on in a tone quite
strange to me. 'What would either's life be worth with the other alive
and happy in this world?'

"He made no answer; and those subtle movements--shadows of movements I
might almost call them--recommenced. Then there came a sudden cry,
shrill and poignant--had Grandfather been in his room he would surely
have heard it--and the flash coming almost simultaneously with its
utterance, I saw what has haunted my sleep from that day to this, my
father pinned against the wall, sword still in hand, and before him my
mother, fiercely triumphant, her staring eyes fixed on his and--

"Nature could bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the
oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild
wail and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this
moment) and recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or
so I have fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell
full upon the point upturned to receive her.

"A groan; then a gasping sigh from him, and silence settled upon the
room and upon my heart and so far as I knew upon the whole created
world.

* * * * *

"That is my story, friends. Do you wonder that I have never been or
lived like other men?"

After a few moments of sympathetic silence, Mr. Van Broecklyn went on to
say:

"I don't think I ever had a moment's doubt that my parents both lay dead
on the floor of that great room. When I came to myself--which may have
been soon, and may not have been for a long while--the lightning had
ceased to flash, leaving the darkness stretching like a blank pall
between me and that spot in which were concentrated all the terrors of
which my imagination was capable. I dared not enter it. I dared not take
one step that way. My instinct was to fly and hide my trembling body
again in my own bed; and associated with this, in fact dominating it and
making me old before my time, was another--never to tell; never to let
anyone, least of all my grandfather--know what that forbidden room now
contained. I felt in an irresistible sort of way that my father's and
mother's honour was at stake. Besides, terror held me back; I felt that
I should die if I spoke. Childhood has such terrors and such