"I told him he meant _this_," he said to himself, in a hoarse whisper. "I told him in this office not six months ago. Powers of hell, what a villain he is! And there are people who do not believe there is a devil!" For a few moments Valentine gave free vent to his passion of grief. These tears of rage, of agony the most supreme, were the first he had shed since he had bent his face over Charlotte's soft brown hair, to hide the evidence of his sorrow. When he had dashed these bitter drops away from his burning eyes, he turned to confront George Sheldon, pale as death, but very calm. And after this he gave way no more to his passion. He was matched against Time, of all enemies the most pitiless and unrelenting, and every minute wasted was a point scored by his foe. "I want your help, George Sheldon," he said. "If you have ever been sorry that you made no effort to save Charlotte Halliday's father, prove yourself his friend by trying to save her." "_If_ I have ever been sorry!" echoed the lawyer. "Why, my miserable dreams have never been free from the horror of that man's face. You don't know what it is--murder! Nobody knows who hasn't been concerned in it. You read of murders in your newspapers. A shot B, or C poisoned D, and so on, all through the letters of the alphabet, with a fresh batch for every Sunday; but it never comes home to you. You think of the horror of it in a shadowy kind of way, as you might think of having a snake twisted round your waist and legs, like that blessed man and boys one never sees the last of. But if you were to look at that plaster cast all your life, you couldn't realize ten per cent of the horror you'd feel if the snake was _there_, alive, crushing your bones, and hissing in your ear. I have been face to face with murder, Valentine Hawkehurst; and if I were to live a century, I should never forget what I felt when I stood by Tom Halliday's deathbed, and it flashed upon me, all at once, that my brother Phil was poisoning him." "And you did not try to save him--your friend?" cried Valentine. "Why, you see," replied the other, in a strange slow way, "it was too late to save him: I knew that, and--I held my tongue. What could I do? Against my own brother! That sort of thing in a family is ruin for every one! Do you think anybody would have brought their business to me after my brother had stood in the Old Bailey dock to take his trial for murder? No; my only course was to keep my own counsel, and I kept it. Phil made eighteen thousand pounds by his marriage with poor Tom's widow, and a paltry hundred or two is all _I_ ever touched of that money." "And you _could_ touch that money?" cried Valentine, aghast.