"`Fraud!' `Robbed!'" sputtered the parson, trying to lash himself into anger to drown the sinking sense that had come over him. "Do you know, sir, that you are using actionable words?" "Ah, ah! History repeats itself. That is precisely as you spoke on the former occasion, friend Dudley. I will say it again, call in witnesses if you like. Having defrauded and robbed me of my patrimony by lies and intriguing, _and_ worse--you, a preacher of the Gospel, a teacher of Christian morality--you threatened me with the law. You made your lawyers write to threaten me with an action for libel if I dared so much as venture an opinion on your behaviour. Do you remember my words to you as I left this room?" Well, indeed, did he remember. And now at the sight of the deadly wrath on this man's features, all the more terrible because so completely held in hand--of the towering form with its back just half a yard from the door, precluding alike entrance or exit--again Mr Vallance could not restrain a shiver of physical fear. "I told you my time would surely come, didn't I? How many years ago was it? Nearer twenty than ten--yes. You slandered my name and stole my possessions--you, a sacred dispenser of sacraments--and I went forth a beggar, followed by your jeers of triumph. If you go where I have been during those years, and take the trouble to enquire, you will learn that few persons have played me a scrofulous trick without bitterly rueing it. You have played me the most scrofulous trick of all, and you are going to rue it." "Well, I must trouble you to let me pass, please. I shall ask you to excuse me wasting my time any longer," said Mr Vallance, making a move as if to leave the room. But the other only smiled. "Not yet. Not quite yet," he said. "By the way, Dudley. Heard anything of Geoffry lately?" The tone was easy--smiling--but it struck a chill to the parson's heart. He glanced up quickly at his interlocutor's face, his own white with deadly fear. His lips parted, but he was powerless to articulate. The other stood immovable--smilingly enjoying his apprehension, but the smile was that of a fiend. "Not heard anything of him?" he said, slowly, while like the hellish hiss of red-hot irons in quivering flesh there passed through his mind the recollection of his cousin's defiant sneers over the successful intrigue that had robbed him of his patrimony, there in that same room, whose very walls seemed to echo their refrain even now. "Not heard anything of him? Well I'm not surprised, for--he's dead." "Dead?" echoed Mr Vallance blankly, as though in a dream. "As the proverbial door-nail." "Murderer!" gasped the wretched man, spasmodically clutching the air with his fingers, and gazing at his tormentor as through a far-off mist. "Oh, no. You are under a delusion," was the cool reply. "It's odd that it should devolve on me--on me above all people--to give you the latest news of him. He died at an Indian stake."