en things out!'

Jim sat in silence for some minutes, but the excitement lingered. He
drifted into questions, and plied the other like a cross-examining lawyer
eager to trap a witness; but Ryder knew every detail of the family
history. He told Jim of a birthmark on his own body. He described the
furnishing of the home in Chisley much as it remained within Jim's
memory.

'You have not mentioned our sister,' he said.

'She killed herself.' Jim spoke with blunt brutality. He had no energy
for equivocation.

Ryder accepted this piece of news in the spirit of a man steeled to the
keenest strokes of Fate.

'She was a beautiful girl,' he said. 'I remember I loved her dearly.'

'You speak as if it were fifty years ago.'

'I have been in hell since, I tell you.'

Jim looked closely into his brother's face again, but it baffled him; it
betrayed no more feeling than a stone.

'Why have you divulged this now?' he asked.

'You forced it from me. I did not expect you to return. I saw you playing
cards at the shanty. But it is as well. I should have told you later.'

'There is something behind?'

'Much; but till you have heard Stony tell his part I shall say no more.
And for the present let this be our secret.'

'Burton may come in at any moment.'

'Good-night, then.'

'No; I'll go with you. I cannot face Mike in this condition. He would
think me mad.'

'To Stony's tent?'

'If you like. In Heaven's name, man, why are you so cold? Why am I like a
stunned brute? We are brothers. We may shake hands.'

Ryder made no advance. 'Better hear the story out,' he said.

It was a two-mile walk from where Jim and Mike were now camped to Stony's
tent, and the hour was midnight. The two men walked in silence, Jim with
his head bowed, racked with nervous excitement, his mind running from
point to point, grasping nothing wholly, seeing nothing clearly, the
other erect and calm. When the tent was reached Ryder entered
unceremoniously, and, striking a match, looked about him for a candle.
There was a slush-lamp on a box by the bunk, and this he lit. Jim saw
Stony start up in bed, and stare at the intruder with a look of mortal
terror.

'I have brought you a visitor,' said Ryder.

The apprehension faded from the hatter's face when he Jim.

'A nice hour!' he grumbled.

'I have not studied your convenience,' answered Ryder. 'Here is the man
to whom you are to tell the story of Richard Done and Peter Cannon. Tell
it briefly, a