“Hark, man! If you have a human soul, listen to me! When I did the deed, it was to save my wife, my child from starvation, from madness. I thought not of myself, Garvin; by the great God, I did not! And by the loss of the child I loved, of the wife for whom I had periled my soul; by years of lone remorse and agony I was punished. Pity me! Pity them—the boy with her sweet eyes and her smiling lips; the child she left me on her death-bed—my little Lilia! Oh, mercy! mercy!” Like the shriek of a damned spirit thrilled those last words. “Give me Lilia,” said Garvin, eagerly, and bending forward. “Monster!” shouted Clifdon, springing to his feet. “Name her not, lest, tempted to a second crime, I strangle thee on the spot! To thee—_thee_? My pure, my pretty Lilia? Sooner let her lie before me, with her winding sheet about her! To _thee_? Off, monster! Off, hell-hound—off!” Intimidated, Garvin retreated, but with outstretched arms his victim followed. One moment more, and with the blood gushing from his mouth and distended nostril, he had fallen to the floor. The tempest of passion had proved too much for a frame already long shaken by fear and anguish; and as Garvin, horror-stricken, raised him to the couch, life seemed almost extinct. A physician was called in, whose remedies stopped the immediate flow of blood, but who attempted to give no hope of recovery. Ere he left the room, however, the senses of his patient returned. “Clear the room,” he said, in a low voice to Garvin, “and call _them_ both. If you are not fiend, do this.” His orders were obeyed, and marveling at the summons, young Mordaunt shortly after followed his grandfather to the room of the dying man. A single lamp cast its dull rays through the deserted apartment upon the deathly face of him who, with livid and muttering lips, and glassy, upturned eyes, seemed uttering his last prayer to the unknown God, unto whose throne his spirit was fleeting. But rarely beautiful amid the gloom and horror of that desolate chamber, radiantly fair as a single star shining through the hideous rack of the tempest, knelt by the bedside, a girl—a child of fifteen summers; and with her hands clasped, and the braids and curls of pale-brown hair showering from her upraised face, upon the folds of her white night-robe, she looked up fearlessly, as though through the dark-stained roof, she gazed, amid the blue above, up into the mercy-seat of heaven. And ever and anon the dying man tossed upon his bed, muttering with ghastly lips, “Pray for me, Lilia; _thy_ lips are pure—pray!” and the child prayed earnestly. A slight movement of those without attracted his attention, and raising himself in his bed with reviving strength, he beckoned the elder Mordaunt to his side. “This is death,” he murmured, “terrible, terrible death! Look upon it, old man, and refuse, if you can, the mercy my God will not deny me!”