in the passage at that time
of night?"

Charles was touched, I could see. A very little kindness was too much
for him.

"It is no good, Marston," he said, in quite a different voice--"I am not
believed in this house."

He turned away and leaned against the mantle-piece, looking into the
fire. Ralph cleared his throat once or twice, and then suddenly went up
to him, and laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"Fire away, old boy!" he said, in a constrained tone, and he choked
again.

Charles turned round and faced his brother, with the saddest smile I
ever saw.

"Well, Ralph!" he said, "I will tell you everything, and then you can
believe me or not, as you like. I have never told you a lie, have I?"

"Not often," replied Ralph, unwillingly.

"You at least are truth itself," said Charles, reddening; "and if you
are biassed in your opinion of me, perhaps it is more the fault of that
exemplary Christian, Aunt Mary, than your own. According to her, I have
told lies enough to float a company or carry an election, and I never
like to disappoint her expectations of me in that respect; but you I
have never to my knowledge deceived, and I am not going to begin now."

"You will be a clergyman yet," whispered the sick parent. "There is a
good living in the family. Charles, I shall live to see the Reverend
Charles Danvers in a surplice, preaching his first sermon on the ninth
commandment."

"At any rate, he is practising the fifth under difficulties at this
moment," said Marston, as Charles winced and turned his back on the
parental sick-bed. "Come, my boy, we are losing time."

"Will somebody have the goodness to restrain Middleton if he gets
excited?" said Charles. "I am afraid he won't like part of what I have
got to say."

"Nonsense, sir!" I replied, with warmth. "I hope I can restrain myself
as well as any man, even under such provocation as I have lately
received. You may depend on me, sir, that--"

"We lose time," said Marston, seating himself by me, and cutting short
what I was saying in an exceedingly brusque manner. "Come, Charles, you
should not be interrupted."

But he was. I interrupted him the whole time, in spite of continual
efforts on the part of Marston to make me keep silence. I am not the man
calmly to let pass black insinuations against the character of a friend.
No, I stood up for him. I am glad to think how I stood up for him, not
only metaphorically, but in the most literal sense of