“It is in vain for you to try to get away,” said the captain slowly. “Here I hold you, and tighten my grasp, till you scream out the truth. They used to do that in England. They slipped the hands in iron gloves and the feet in iron boots, and screwed till the blood ran out of fingers and foot-ends, and the criminal told the truth. So will I screw the truth out of you, out of your hands. You cannot escape. Was the father of Giles a nobleman?” “He was not the highest of all—not a duke.” “What was he then?” She was silent, and strove to twist her hands away. He held both now. He compressed his clutch. She cried out, “I cannot bear this.” “What was his title?” “You are hurting me, Stephen.” “Was he a nobleman at all?” With hesitation, and another writhe to get away—“N—no.” “Then, all that story you told of the deception practised upon you was a lie?” “Not a lie—it was a joke. James was not such a fool as you, he took it as such. But you—” Then Stephen Saltren drew his wife to her feet, and strode to the door, dragging her with him. She screamed. She supposed he was about to kill her; but he turned, and said gloomily, “I will not hurt you, I want to show you what you have done—with your _joke_.” He forced open the door, and drew her through the garden, out at the wicket gate, along the path up the coombe. There were two ways thence to Orleigh Park, one down the coombe to the main valley and high-road, and round a shoulder of hill; the other way by a steep climb up a zig-zag path in the side of the hill to the top of the crag, thence over a stretch of some thirty acres of furzy down into the plantations and so into the park through them. The tortuous ascent began at the cottage, Chillacot, but Saltren drew his wife past the point whence it rose to where the evening sun cast the black shadow of the crag or “cleave” across the glen, and there—lying on broken, fallen stones, with his hands outstretched, his face to the clear sky, lay Lord Lamerton, dead. Marianne Saltren cowered back, she was too frightened by what she saw to care to approach; but her husband’s vice-like grasp did not relax for all her weeping and entreaties. He compelled her to come close to the fallen man. His finger ends buried themselves in her wrists, and checked her pulse, that her hands became numb, and tingled.