communication of thought? Is there a subtle
interchange of mind which is instinctively felt? I think so, for no
sooner did I feel that I could not harm Wilfred than his evident fear
left him. He acted on the aggressive immediately, and spoke boldly.

"Yes, what will you do?" he said. "I refuse to know you. I refuse to
recognise you. My brother Roger is dead, and was buried long years
since. You are some impostor come here to claim what is not your own,
under the paltry pretence of revenge."

My brother's villainy was now manifest, and my old hatred came surging
back.

"Roger is not dead, and that you will soon find out," I said. "All
your authority and power are gone, the son and heir has come; but
Ruth's avenger is come too! 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth.' You shall suffer as she has suffered, you shall die as she
died. I have a long score to pay. I have ten years of misery in the
past to account for. I have a blackened future from which you are not
free."

We were standing near the cliff as I said this, but I had my eye upon
him, and it is well it was so, for he jumped at me savagely, and, had I
not been prepared I should have fallen from the dizzy height to the
ragged rocks below.

"Curse you," he cried; "but you have not a child to deal with, or the
puny boy whose weakness you used to take advantage of. I am not going
to let Trewinion go. I have not enjoyed it for ten years to lose it
now. If Roger did not die ten years ago he shall die now."

With that he sought to drag me nearer the cliff, while I gripped him
firmly. He did not fight defensively now. For him, everything
depended on the struggle. To rob me of my love, and to rob me of my
money, he had schemed to get me away, and now that I had come back he
determined to hold by all he had stolen. Nor did I fight defensively.
I felt I had lost Ruth, ay, I had lost my life itself through him, and
I gripped him with a grip of iron. I thought of misery, and revenge;
he of disgrace and the loss of what he held dear.

I soon found out that, as he had said, I had not a child or a puny boy
to deal with. His muscles seemed of iron, and he coiled around me like
a serpent. If I hated, he hated still more, and with the malignity of
a demon he sought to master me. I was, however, the bigger and the
stronger man, while the past ten years of my life had developed my
physical strength greatly. Toil and exposure had given me power of