“I don’t know what you’re a-talking about, Stephen. I concern myself about common things, and about prophecy no more than I do about moonshine. The jams get mouldy and the hams ain’t fit to eat.” “Did I not tell you, Marianne, of what I saw and heard that Sabbath day?” “I gave no heed to it.” “It is fulfilled. The purposes of heaven fulfil themselves in a wonderful and unexpected way when we are least awaiting it. He is dead.” “Who is dead?” “Lord Lamerton.” “Lord Lamerton!” Marianne Saltren started. “How is it that? Where, Stephen, and when?” “He is lying dead beneath the cliff.” “Good heavens! How came that about?” “He was cast down by the hand of an avenging justice. You have been avenged.” “I—I have nothing to complain of—to have avenged on Lord Lamerton.” “Nothing of late, but you told me of the dishonour, of the wrong——” Mrs. Saltren uttered a cry of horror. “Stephen, for God’s sake!—you do not mean?—you know, you know that I named no names.” “I knew, Marianne, to whom you referred. I knew it at once. Then I understood why you gave your son the Christian name he bears.” “Oh, Stephen, it was not that.” “Yes, Marianne, it was. It all hangs together. I saw how he, Lord Lamerton, was constrained to make much of the boy, to spend money on him, to educate and make a gentleman of him, and take him into his house.” “Stephen! Stephen! this is all a mistake.” “No, Marianne, it is no mistake. I see it all as plainly as I saw the angel flying in the midst of heaven bearing the Everlasting Gospel in his right hand, which he cast into the water before me.” “I was talking nonsense. I am—Oh, Stephen! What did you say?—he—Lord Lamerton is not dead?” “He is dead. He is lying dead on the path.” Mrs. Saltren was seized with a fit of trembling, as if an ague were come over her. She stared at her husband, terror stricken, and could not speak. A horrible thought, a sickening dread, had swept over her, and she shrank from asking a question which might receive an answer confirming her half-formulated fears. “The judgment has tarried long, but the sentence has overtaken the sinner at last. Now, after all, he has been made to suffer for what he once did to you. He cast you down, and with like measure has it been meted to him. He is cast down.” “He did nothing to me.” “You are ready to forgive him now, and to forget the past, because you are a Christian. But eternal justice never forgets, it waits and watches, and when least expected, strikes down.” “Oh, Stephen! What are you thinking of? You listened to my idle talk. You fancy that Lord Lamerton was—was the father of Giles, but he was not. Indeed, indeed he was not.” “He was not!” echoed the captain, standing stiffly with outstretched arms and clenched fists, a queer ungainly figure, jointless, as if made of wooden sticks. “You yourself told me that he was.”