day a new idea came into my head; I found out that you were
coming home just as the steamer which brought you was on the coast. That
your will had been made, leaving all you had to be equally divided
between your wife and sister. If you should never reach shore Elsie
would be worth claiming in earnest. But with that news came a letter
from my wife; against my commands she was following me to this country,
just when her presence was certain ruin."

The man broke off in his narration here, evidently convulsed with more
than physical pain, specks of foam flew to his lips, great drops of
agony stood on his forehead.

"Brandy; give me some brandy!" he cried out huskily. "Some brandy, I
say."

Mellen poured some brandy into a glass and held it to his mouth. He
drank eagerly, and sank back to the floor again.

"What's the use of talking about that? I would have saved her at the
last, and tried hard enough, but the storm was too much for me. After
all that, you baffled me and got on shore; the fiends must have guided
that pilot boat. I got frightened too. It was not a part of my programme
to go down with you."

"Wretch!" said Mellen, struck with a sudden idea, "you were the person
who nearly lost me among the breakers."

"Yes," answered Ford. "We both had a narrow chance, but the risk was
worth running--that is, if your will really was made--but when you once
touched shore all hope for me was over. I must leave America; I sent
word to your wife that I must have twenty-five thousand dollars or claim
my wife.

"She was trying to get it; she gave me the bracelet as a bribe for
delay, one night when I came. Still of one thing I pledge you my soul,
it is pretty much all I have left now, your wife never dreamed that I
was your enemy, Ford. She knew I was a villain, and held the fate of
that pretty fool in my hands. Now you have the whole story. I came here
to-night because I had not heard from her; now I believe she's dead. I
thought I would see that girl there. Now, then, Grantley Mellen, are you
satisfied? You have driven your wife away, you could believe her guilty,
and pet that frivolous thing in her place!"

"'When did I first see her?' when she was a flirty little school girl.

"'When did I marry her?' what there was of it, remember--just after you
started for California, when the widow Harrington innocently brought me
a guest into this house against the wishes of its mistress, who had seen
me about the boarding-sch