seemed to me to have set its seal upon her; but she had information which she would only sell, until I told her where Claire had gone, and whom she was to marry. Then and there it all came out. I must say there was no huckstering then! The wretched woman seemed genuinely distressed. She told me”—Harding wiped his mouth, and his voice trembled—” she told me my daughter was gone to be a murderer’s wife!”
“Yet you did not know of it?”
“I did not know about Blaydes. That made the second!”
“His second murder?” gasped Tom.
“Or manslaughter—call it what you will. The first was the worst: it was— fratricide! There were two brothers; James was the younger. Out shooting, one day, when they were both mere lads, he shot a dog dead in his passion. The brother abused him; in an instant he also was shot through the heart. It was brought in an accident, but the family knew what it was. They drummed him out, they refused to see his face again; he was as much transported as any felon in New South Wales, with as good a cause. We never knew why his family would have nothing to do with him: why, for instance, the very flowers he laid upon his mother’s grave were summarily returned to him. It seemed inhuman, but I think it was very human now! God help me, I thought it was only the ordinary wild-oats, made too much of. But I was at fault, grievously at fault! Bitterly I regret it; bitterly I shall rue it till my dying day!”
Nicholas Harding was deeply moved; he was indeed a different man. In a hoarse voice he described the horrors of the interminable outward voyage, the per-
