"It was difficult to obtain, friend. No one but myself could have procured it. Myself alone did that boy fear. I had broken his nerve. In drink one night, not many weeks ago, he came to me, forgetting himself so far as to threaten me and demand of me money, accusing me of having killed your uncle. At once I knew then it was he who had killed him. I had suspected him for long. He told me he was there and had seen me in the library. But I was not to be thus threatened by this youth. We were alone. It was night. I locked the door and taxed him with the crime. He would not confess. But I knew the lad; I alone knew Shorty and the only way with him. In the grate there burned a fire, and by the hearth a poker stood--'twas easy made red-hot, and----" "Good God, man, don't describe to me your loathsome horrors. Have done with your story and go." "Well, that was how, friend, I came by this confession. I told him while he lived I would not use it for his undoing. In truth I could not, since my own past is not clean. But now that he is dead he cannot suffer in this world for his crimes. I alone am left. Your uncle ruined me, friend. I hated him. All my life I hated him. He sapped my soul; he was a vampire. I ask you now to help me to end my days in such peace as is left to me. I am without money. I wish to leave this country and return to the land of my exile. The Mark of the Beast is on me, and I am getting old. My end will come soon now, and I shall join your uncle, and Jabez Crane, and Shorty, and all our other kindred souls in Hell; down there, deep down in Hell. Already I have tasted of its fires--but they have not caught me yet; They chase me all the time, but They----" The Major stopped him. "If I give you money," he said, "I give it you in this way: fifty pounds and your passage to Australia. Never again set foot in this country. I may be wrong; but I believe your story, and I would wipe out once for all the memory of it. I am sorry for you, Farren. Give me some address, and what I have promised you shall follow. But remember if I catch you in this country that's the end of you." "Thanks be to you," he said. Then he scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, and took up his hat and cloak and vanished. EPILOGUE. John Dundas was as good as his word, and within a fortnight of his visit to Brampton the unhappy Farren was on board an Oriental liner bound for Melbourne.