ed to
Brooker. Ralph again gazed at him: as it seemed mechanically.

'That boy,' said the man, 'that these gentlemen have been talking of--'

'That boy,' repeated Ralph, looking vacantly at him.

'Whom I saw, stretched dead and cold upon his bed, and who is now in his
grave--'

'Who is now in his grave,' echoed Ralph, like one who talks in his
sleep.

The man raised his eyes, and clasped his hands solemnly together:

'--Was your only son, so help me God in heaven!'

In the midst of a dead silence, Ralph sat down, pressing his two hands
upon his temples. He removed them, after a minute, and never was there
seen, part of a living man undisfigured by any wound, such a ghastly
face as he then disclosed. He looked at Brooker, who was by this time
standing at a short distance from him; but did not say one word, or make
the slightest sound or gesture.

'Gentlemen,' said the man, 'I offer no excuses for myself. I am long
past that. If, in telling you how this has happened, I tell you that I
was harshly used, and perhaps driven out of my real nature, I do it only
as a necessary part of my story, and not to shield myself. I am a guilty
man.'

He stopped, as if to recollect, and looking away from Ralph, and
addressing himself to the brothers, proceeded in a subdued and humble
tone:

'Among those who once had dealings with this man, gentlemen--that's from
twenty to five-and-twenty years ago--there was one: a rough fox-hunting,
hard-drinking gentleman, who had run through his own fortune, and wanted
to squander away that of his sister: they were both orphans, and she
lived with him and managed his house. I don't know whether it was,
originally, to back his influence and try to over-persuade the young
woman or not, but he,' pointing, to Ralph, 'used to go down to the house
in Leicestershire pretty often, and stop there many days at a time. They
had had a great many dealings together, and he may have gone on some
of those, or to patch up his client's affairs, which were in a ruinous
state; of course he went for profit. The gentlewoman was not a girl,
but she was, I have heard say, handsome, and entitled to a pretty large
property. In course of time, he married her. The same love of gain
which led him to contract this marriage, led to its being kept strictly
private; for a clause in her father's will declared that if she married
without her brother's consent, the property, in which she had only some
life interest while she