"But somebody else shall!" said Jasper grimly. "That was it, you may depend; you should have listened at the door. But that make no matter. Somebody else is going to know before he's many minutes older!" And an ugly smile broadened on the thick-set face; but the woman gasped. Quick as thought the child was on the sofa, the grandmother on her feet. Trembling and terrified, she stood in her husband's path. "Jasper! You're never going up to the rectory?" "I am, though--this minute!" "Oh, Jasper!" "Do you let me by." "But I promised you should never know! You've made me break my solemn word! He'll know I've broken it!" "Yes, I'm going to learn him a thing or two. Will you let me by?" "_She'll_ know--too--wherever she has gone to!" "You'd better not keep me no more." "Jasper! Jasper! On her death-bed I promised her----" "Out of my light!" III A CONFESSION The rector's study was on the ground floor, facing south. It was a long room, but narrow, and so low that the present incumbent, who stood six-feet-two, had contracted a stoop out of continual and instinctive dread of the ancient beams that scored his study ceiling, combined with a besetting habit of pacing the floor. There were two doors; one led into the garden, providing parishioners with immediate access to the rector when he was not to be found at the church; the other terminated an inner passage. Both were of immemorial oak, and, like the lattice casement over the writing table, both rattled in the least wind. Such was the room which the Reverend Robert Carlton haunted when driven or detained indoors: rickety, ill-lighted, and draughty when it was not close, it was still a habitable hole enough, and picturesque in spite of its occupant.