embarrassment, and in a
voice that could scarcely support itself. But the deep fear that had
come over him had not yet taken hold of the lawyer. Mr. Bonnithorne
listened with a bland smile of amused incredulity. Hugh stopped with a
shudder.

"What are you thinking?" he asked, nervously.

"That Natt lied."

"As well say that the people at the fire lied."

"No; you yourself saw Paul there."

"Bonnithorne, like all keen-eyed men, you are short-sighted. I have
something more to tell you. The people at the Pack Horse say that Paul
slept at their house last Wednesday night. Now I know that he slept at
home."

Mr. Bonnithorne smiled again.

"A mistake as to the night," he said; "what can be plainer?"

"Don't wriggle; look the facts in the face."

"Facts?--a coincidence in evidence--a common error."

"Would to God it were!" Hugh strode about the room in obvious
perturbation, his eyes bent on the ground. "Bonnithorne, what is the
place where the girl Mercy lives?"

"An inn at Hendon."

"Do they call it the Hawk and Heron?"

"They do. The old woman Drayton keeps it."

Hugh Ritson's step faltered. He listened with a look of stupid
consternation.

"Did I never tell you that the peddler, Oglethorpe, said he saw Paul at
the Hawk and Heron in Hendon?"

Mr. Bonnithorne dropped back into his seat without a word. Conviction
was taking hold of him.

"What do the folks say?" he asked at length.

"Say? That it was a ghost, a wraith, twenty things--the idiots!"

"What do you say, Mr. Ritson?"

"That it was another man."

The lawyer remained sitting, his eyes fixed and vacant.

"What then? What if it is another man? Resemblances are common. We are
all brothers. For example, there are numbers of persons like myself in
the world. Odd, isn't it?"

"Very," said Hugh, with a hard laugh.

"And what if there exists a man resembling your half-brother, Paul, so
closely that on three several occasions he has been mistaken for him by
competent witnesses--what does it come to?"

Hugh paused.

"Come to. God knows! I want to find out. Who is this man? What is he?
Where does he come from? What is his business here? Why, of all places
on this wide earth, does he, of all men alive, haunt my house like a
shadow?"

Hugh Ritson was still visibly perturbed.

"There's more in this matter than either of us knows," he said.

Mr. Bonnithorne watched him for a moment in silence.

"I think you draw a painful inference--what is