rother. Look on me as your
friend, your brother.'

Howel looked up, and for one moment there was remorse and agony in his
face; the next, no stone was harder and colder.

'Brother!' he said, with a voice of icy sarcasm, 'you have shown
yourself my brother of late! I saw you in the court, cold and
calculating; not a word for this, your _brother_! Bah!'

'What would you have had me say?' asked Rowland, recovering his
composure, and glancing from Howel to Netta's letter.

'I understand you; you mean that I murdered her. I did, virtually. Then
why be hypocrite enough to call me brother?'

'She forgave you, and called you husband.'

'Because she--she loved me.'

There was another involuntary groan, and a brief silence.

'Where are her papers? Give them me, and go,' said Howel imperatively.

Rowland put a neatly-sealed packet on the table, on which was written,
'For my husband, Howel Jenkins;--to the care of my brother, Rowland
Prothero. Janetta Jenkins.'

'This, too, she left for you,' said Rowland, putting the small
Testament, originally her mother's, on the table. Again the stony lips
trembled, the eyes softened. 'Howel, Howel, for her sake!' once more
ventured Rowland.

There they lay--the letter, the packet, the Testament. All that was left
to him of the once bright, loving, and lovely creature, who had been
devoted to him all her life.

He turned the leaves of the Testament mechanically; touched the
packet--shuddered; then leaning his head upon his folded arms on the
table, burst into an uncontrollable agony of grief.

'She is--she was--where?' he said, after a short interval, rising from
his seat, and beginning to pace the cell.

'Her soul is in heaven, I hope and believe; her body rests in Llanfach
churchyard, under the large hawthorn bush near the vicarage gate.'

Often and often had Howel gathered Netta bunches of May from that very
tree that now sheltered her remains.

'Tell me--tell me all,' he said, 'from the time I left her, till--how
you found her--everything.'

'You must sit down, Howel, and hear me patiently if you can.'

Howel sat down on the bedstead, and again covering his face with both
hands, listened; whilst Rowland took the seat he had left, and fulfilled
his bidding.

He told him everything that had happened to Netta, from the period of
her being left in the lodgings in his parish, until her death at the
farm. He felt that the one hope of softening Howel, or doing him any
good