the house. When he remembered this, he sat down again, and at the same
moment Mat began, clumsily and slowly, to write on the blank space
beneath the last signature attached to the Address.

The sky was still darkening apace, the rain was falling heavily and more
heavily, as he traced the final letter, and then handed the paper to Mr.
Thorpe, bearing inscribed on it the name of MARY GRICE.

"Read that name," said Mat.

Mr. Thorpe looked at the characters traced by the pencil. His face
changed instantly--he sank down into the chair--one faint cry burst from
his lips--then he was silent.

Low, stifled, momentary as it was, that cry proclaimed him to be the
man. He was self-denounced by it even before he cowered down, shuddering
in the chair, with both his hands pressed convulsively over his face.

Mat rose to his feet and spoke; eyeing him pitilessly from head to foot.

"Not a friend of all of 'em," he said, pointing down at the Address,
"put such affectionate trust in you, as she did. When first I see her
grave in the strange churchyard, I said I'd be even with the man who
laid her in it. I'm here to-day to be even with _you._ Carr or Thorpe,
whichever you call yourself; I know how you used her from first to last!
_Her_ father was _my_ father; _her_ name is _my_ name: you were _her_
worst enemy three-and-twenty year ago; you are _my_ worst enemy now. I'm
her brother, Matthew Grice!"

The hands of the shuddering figure beneath him suddenly dropped--the
ghastly uncovered face looked up at him, with such a panic stare in the
eyes, such a fearful quivering and distortion of all the features, that
it tried even his firmness of nerve to look at it steadily. In spite of
himself; he went back to his chair, and sat down doggedly by the table,
and was silent.

A low murmuring and moaning, amid which a few disconnected words made
themselves faintly distinguishable, caused him to look round again.
He saw that the ghastly face was once more hidden. He heard the
disconnected words reiterated, always in the same stifled wailing
tones. Now and then, a half finished phrase was audible from behind the
withered hands, still clasped over the face, He heard such fragments of
sentences as these:--"Have pity on my wife"--"accept the remorse of many
years"--"spare me the disgrace--"

After those four last words, he listened for no more. The merciless
spirit was roused in him again the moment he heard them.

"Spare you the disgrace?"