"Mother put in into my mind, and I thought that--that--you didn't care, so I--I----" he stopped in confusion. "Coward! to put the fault on your mother. Now another question. Did you villify me to Ruth, did you wear away her life by trying to get her to marry you, even when you knew she loved me?" "Roger, I wanted her so, and you were gone, and we thought you dead, and our affairs got entangled so----" "You killed her," I said savagely. "But for your accursed cunning and greed she would be alive now." "I didn't know, Roger. I knew she didn't like me after--after--you went away, but I didn't think I should----" "Did you hold her to her promise to the last?" "Yes--that is, I thought she might get better again and so----" "You drove her to her death, and now my turn has come." "But you will not hurt me, Roger; you will not hurt your brother! What will you do?" This touched me to the quick, and for a time I felt I could not hurt him. Is there unspoken communication of thought? Is there a subtle interchange of mind which is instinctively felt? I think so, for no sooner did I feel that I could not harm Wilfred than his evident fear left him. He acted on the aggressive immediately, and spoke boldly. "Yes, what will you do?" he said. "I refuse to know you. I refuse to recognise you. My brother Roger is dead, and was buried long years since. You are some impostor come here to claim what is not your own, under the paltry pretence of revenge." My brother's villainy was now manifest, and my old hatred came surging back. "Roger is not dead, and that you will soon find out," I said. "All your authority and power are gone, the son and heir has come; but Ruth's avenger is come too! 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' You shall suffer as she has suffered, you shall die as she died. I have a long score to pay. I have ten years of misery in the past to account for. I have a blackened future from which you are not free." We were standing near the cliff as I said this, but I had my eye upon him, and it is well it was so, for he jumped at me savagely, and, had I not been prepared I should have fallen from the dizzy height to the ragged rocks below. "Curse you," he cried; "but you have not a child to deal with, or the puny boy whose weakness you used to take advantage of. I am not going to let Trewinion go. I have not enjoyed it for ten years to lose it now. If Roger did not die ten years ago he shall die now."