Paul placed his hand side by side with hers, and lifted his eyes to heaven. "On my father's body, by my mother's honor--never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act or her shame--always to bear myself as their lawful son before man, even as I am their rightful son before God--I swear it! I swear it!" His voice was cold and clear, but the words were scarcely uttered when he fell to his knees again, with a subdued cry of overwrought feeling. Mrs. Ritson staggered back, caught the curtains of the bed, and covered her face. All was still. Then a shuffling footfall was heard on the floor. Hugh Ritson was in the darkened room. He lifted the shaded lamp from the table, approached the bedside, and held the lamp with one hand above his head. The light fell on the outstretched body of his father and the bowed head of his brother. _BOOK II._ THE COIL OF THE TEMPTATION. CHAPTER I. It was late in November, and the day was dark and drear. Hoar-frost lay on the ground. The atmosphere was pallid with haze and dense with mystery. Gaunt specters of white mist swept across the valley and gathered at the sides of every open door. The mountains were gone. Only a fibrous vagueness was visible. In an old pasture field by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun. There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the expression of gentleness and easy good-nature. It was a fine old face, with the beauty of simplicity and the sweetness of content. A boy in front led the horses, and whistled. The parson hummed a tune as he turned his furrows. Sometimes he sung in a drawling tone-- "Bonny lass, canny lass, wilta be mine? Thou's nowder wesh dishes nor sarra the swine." At the turn-rows he paused, and rested on his plow handles. He rested longest at the turn-rows on the roadside of the field. Like the shivering mists that grouped about the open doors, he was held there by light and warmth. The smithy stood at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's sledge echoed in unseen recesses of the hills beyond.