"I cannot reproach him as I would," thought Mr. Greatorex, throwing himself into a chair in his room, when he quitted the office for the day, urged to despair almost at this recent negligence, or whatever it was, that had been brought home to them, and which had been traced to some forgetfulness of Bede's. "With that wan, weary look in his face, just as his mother's wore when her sickness was coming on, it goes against me to blow him up harshly, as I should Frank. He must be very ill; he could not, else, look as he does; perhaps already nearly past hope: it was only when she was past hope that she suddenly failed in her round of duties and broke down. And he has one misery that his mother had not--trouble of mind, with that wife of his." It was at this juncture that Mr. Greatorex was broken in upon by Henry William Ollivera. The clergyman, standing so that the bright slanting rays of the hot evening sun, falling across his face, lighted up its pallor and its suppressed eagerness, imparted the tale that he had come to tell: the discovery that he and Edmund Willett had that day made. It a little excited Mr. Greatorex. Truth to say, he had always looked upon that unfinished letter as a nearly certain proof that his nephew's death _had_ been in accordance with the verdict of the jury. To him, as well as to the dead man's brother, the apparent impossibility of discovering any cause for its having been penned, or person for whom it could have been intended, had remained the great gulf of difficulty which could not be bridged over. In this, the first moment of the disclosure, it seemed to him a great discovery. We all know how exaggerated a view we sometimes take of matters, when they are unexpectedly presented to us. Mr. Greatorex went forth, calling aloud for his son Bede: who came down, in return to the call, in dinner attire. As Bede entered, his eye fell on his cousin Henry--or William, as Mr. Greatorex generally liked to call him--whose usually placid countenance was changed by the scarlet hectic on its thin cheeks. Bede saw that something, great or little, was about to be disclosed, and wished himself away again: for some time past he had felt no patience with the fancies and crotchets of Henry Ollivera. It was Mr. Greatorex who disclosed what there was to tell. Bede received it ungraciously; that is, in spite of disbelieving mockery. Henry Ollivera was accustomed to these moods of his. The clergyman did not resent it openly; he simply stood with his deep eyes fixed watchingly on Bede's face, as if the steady gaze, the studied silence, carried their own reproof. "I believe, if some wight came down on a voyage from the moon, and fed you with the most improbable fable ever invented by the erratic imagination of man, you would place credence in it," said Bede, turning sharply on Mr. Ollivera. "Edmund Willett has not come from the moon," quietly spoke the clergyman.