"I do not believe it," I said. "No one who reads the closing words of his confession could believe such a thing. Nay, I feel sure his end was peace." "Well, it may be so; I hope it is. But directly after his death my grandfather's brother, the Wilfred he speaks so much about, sent for my father. What he said to him I do not know, but from that time he became as one possessed of the devil. He married, and although his wife was my mother, and it is hard to say it, she made his life terrible to bear. They had several children, all of whom died at an early age, excepting me. Everything to which my father put his hand, seemed accursed, and every life he touched he blighted. Although, before he died, my grandfather had put the property on a firm and secure basis, my father, in spite of himself, let a great deal of it slip out of his hands. Disappointed in life, he drifted away into sin, and died with his mouth full of curses, a raving maniac. After his death I of course succeeded him. True, I do not need money, but a great part of the estate is gone, while the whole of the Morton estate has passed from my hands." "To whom?" "To the other branch of the family. Before my father's death, Wilfred had secured the whole of my grandmother's estate, and a great deal of mine," as he spoke his eyes lit up with an angry flash. "And does the enmity still exist?" "Ay, does it? Man, I tell you the hatred is not one-sided now. I have prayed to love, and I cannot; if hatred can make a man liable to come under a curse, I am that man. There is bitter undying enmity between us. Our family has been looked on by them as robbers of their rights, and enemies of their peace. Wilfred taught his children to look on us so, as he swore he would, and the feeling exists to-day." He paused a second and then went on. "And now they gloat over the fact that the old Trewinion Manor shall be theirs, the place they have coveted so long, and that I shall pay for my father's sins by dying an accursed death. I am the last of the heirs, and, according to them, am of the third generation, my grandfather being accounted by them as the first who really felt the curse. Do you see now why I fear? I saw my father die, and the legend says that my death shall be worse than his. Even now I can hear shrieks of despair, and his unavailing cries for peace and comfort, and that I am to die a death worse than that is maddening to think." I saw that he had been feeding his morbid imagination by brooding over these things, and that living alone in that lonely old house of weird associations must have led him to live such an unnatural life that he had become a confirmed monomaniac. "But why should you be the last of your race? And why should you give way to these dread fancies?" "Why should I be the last of my race?" he repeated--"ah, man, you do not know."