"Fiend!" I continued, "you can kill me if you like, but I will count your crimes with my last breath. Take my life as you took my friend Tom Loveday's life--Tom whom you knifed in the dark, mistaking him for me. Take it as you took Claire's, if ever man--" "Claire--Claire dead!" He staggered back a step, and almost at the same moment I thought I caught a sound on the other side of the partition at my back. I listened for a moment, then concluding that my ears had played me some trick, went on again-- "Yes, dead--she killed herself to-night at the theatre--stabbed herself--oh, God! Do you think I care for your knife now? Why, I was going to kill myself, to drown myself, at the very moment when I heard your voice and came on board. I came to kill you. Make the most of it--show me no mercy, for as there is a God in heaven I would have shown you none!" What was that sound again on the other side of the partition? Whatever it was, Colliver had not heard, for he was musing darkly and looking fixedly at me. "No, I will show you no mercy," he answered quietly, "for I have sworn to show no mercy to your race, and you are the last of it. But listen, that for a few moments before you die you may shake off your smug complacency and learn what this wealth is, and what kind of brood you Trenoweths are. Dog! The treasure that lies by Dead Man's Rock is treasure weighted with dead men's curses and stained with dead men's blood--wealth won by black piracy upon the high seas--gold for which many a poor soul walked the plank and found his end in the deep waters. It is treasure sacked from many a gallant ship, stripped from many a rotting corpse by that black hound your grandfather, Amos Trenoweth. You guessed that? Let me tell you more. "There is many a soul crying in heaven and hell for vengeance on your race; but your death to-night, Jasper Trenoweth, shall be the peculiar joy of one. You guessed that your grandfather had crimes upon his soul; but you did not guess the blackest crime on his account--the murder of his dearest friend. Listen. I will be brief with you, but I cannot spare myself the joy of letting you know this much before you die. Know then that when your grandfather was a rich man by this friend's aid--after, with this friend's help, he had laid hands on the secret of the Great Ruby for which for many a year he had thirsted, in the moment of his triumph he turned and slew that friend in order to keep the Ruby to himself. "That fool, your father, kept a Journal--which no doubt you have read over and over again. Did he tell you how I caught him upon Adam's Peak, sitting with this clasp in his hands before a hideous, graven stone? That stone was cut in ghastly mockery of that friend's face; the bones that lay beneath it were the bones of that friend. There, on that very spot where I met your father face to face, did his father, Amos Trenoweth, strike down my father Ralph Colliver.