Ewing, and Clemency as her daughter. It has been a life of constant watchfulness and deception, and I have been bound hand and foot. Even had Clemency's father not been so exceedingly careful that it would have been difficult to reach him by legal methods, there was the poor child to be considered, and the ignominy which would come upon her at the exposure of her father. I have done what I could. I am naturally a man who hates deception, and wishes above all things to lead a life with its windows open and shades up, but I have been forced into the very reverse. My life has been as closely shuttered and curtained as my house. I have been obliged to force my own wife to live after the same fashion. Now the cause for this secrecy is removed, but as far as she is concerned, the truth must still be concealed for Clemency's sake. It must not be known that that dead man was her father, and the very instant we let go one thread of the mystery the whole fabric will unravel. Poor Clara can never be acknowledged openly as my wife, the best and most patient wife a man ever had, and under a heavier sentence of death this moment than the utmost ingenuity of man could contrive." Gordon groaned, and let his head sink upon his hands. "She told me some time ago that she was ill," James said pityingly. "Ill? She has been upon the executioner's block for years. It is not illness; that is too tame a word for it. It is torture, prolonged as only the evil forces of Nature herself can prolong it." Gordon rose and shook himself angrily. "I am keeping her now almost constantly under morphine," he said. "She has suffered more lately. The attacks have been more frequent. There has never been the slightest possibility of a surgical operation. From the very first it was utterly hopeless, and if it had been the dog there, I should have put a bullet through his head and considered myself a friend." Gordon gazed with miserable reflection at the dog. "I am glad that the _direct_ cause of that man's death was not what it might have been," he said. He shook himself again as a dog shakes off water. He laughed a miserable laugh. "Well," he said, "Clemency is free now. She can go her ways as she will. You see she resembled her mother so closely that I had to guard her from even the sight of her father. He would have known the truth at once. Clemency is free, but I have paid an awful price for her freedom and for your life. If I had not done what you doubtless know I did that night, you would have been shot, and it would have been a struggle between myself and her father, with the very good chance of my being killed, and Clara and the girl left defenseless. His revolver carried six deaths in it. It would all have depended upon the quickness of the dog, and I should have left too much hanging upon that."