The man he had slain yonder was the father of the woman he loved. True that the act had been a sacrifice, and not a murder; the execution of ready-handed justice upon a criminal, and not an act of personal revenge. But would Lucille ever believe that? She who, in spite of all her grandfather’s dark hints and bitter speeches, still clung with a fond belief to the father she had loved. She must never know that fatal deed in the western wilderness; never learn what a wretch man becomes when necessity degrades him to the level of the very beasts against which he fights the desperate fight for life. Take from man civilisation and Christianity, and who shall say how far he is superior, either in the capacity to suffer or in kindliness of nature, to the tiger he hunts in the Indian jungle, or the wolf he shoots in the Canadian backwoods? And this was the man whose fate, until last night, he had stood pledged to discover; the man whose lost footsteps he was to have tracked through the wilderness of life. Little need of inquiry. This man’s troubled history had been brought to an abrupt ending, and by the seeker’s rash hand. ‘Come,’ said Lucille anxiously; ‘we must find those papers for my grandfather. He will not rest unless he has them this evening.’ Lucius began his task without another word; he could not trust himself to speak yet awhile. He unfastened the clumsy folding-doors of the cabinet, with a hand that trembled a little in spite of his effort to be calm, and opened the drawers one after another. They came out easily enough, and rattled loosely in their frames, so shrunken was the wood. Outer drawers and inner drawers, and papers in almost all of them—some were mere scrappy memoranda, scrawled on half sheets or quarter sheets of letter paper; other documents were in sealed envelopes; others were little packets of letters, two or three together, tied with faded red tape. Lucius examined all the drawers and minute cupboards, designed, one would suppose, with a special view to the accumulation of rubbish; emptied them of their contents, tied the papers all together in his handkerchief, and gave them into the custody of Lucille. The light had faded a little by the time this was done, and the corners of the loft were wrapped in deepening shadow—a gruesome ghostly place to be left alone in by this half-light. Lucille looked round her with a shudder as she turned to leave it. They were on the perilous staircase—Lucius in front, Lucille behind him, half supported by his uplifted arm, both obliged to stoop to avoid knocking their heads against the low sloping ceiling—when Lucius saw and heard something sufficiently startling. In the half dusk of the landing below them, he saw the door of one of those empty rooms which Lucille had declared to be locked opened—ever so little way—and then closed again quickly but softly, as if shut by a careful hand. He distinctly saw the opening of the door; he distinctly heard the noise of the lock.