“Would it not be well to ascertain if it fits the pistol you have in your pocket?” “Yes. I will go to the station to-morrow and look into that.” There was no more said about the pistol that evening. Theodore felt that it would be cruelty to dwell upon the subject, seeing that his kinsman had been deeply affected by the discovery, and that he was oppressed by a gloom which he strove in vain to shake off. It was evident to Theodore that those initials on the pistol had a terrible meaning for Lord Cheriton, that he recognized in those initials the evidence of an injured husband’s vengeance, a hatred which had been undiminished by the lapse of years. He told himself that the tardiness of that revenge might be accounted for by various contingencies, any one of which would lessen the improbability of that long interval between the wrong done and the retribution exacted. It might be that the murderer had been an exile in a distant world. It might be that he had been a criminal fretting himself against the bars of a felon’s prison, nursing his anger in the dull, dead days of penal servitude. Such things have been. It was clear to Theodore Dalbrook that in those initials upon the Colt’s revolver lay the clue to the murderer, and that Lord Cheriton shrank with horror from the revelation which those two letters might bring about. Yet, whatever evil might come upon the master of Cheriton out of the secret past, it was vital that the murderer should be found, lest his second crime should be more hideous than his first; and Theodore was resolved that he would spare no effort in the endeavour to find him, living or dead. “God grant that I may find a grave rather than the living man,” he thought, “for Cheriton’s sake. God grant that he may be spared the humiliation of having his story told to all the world.”