Christopher had helped Tucker upstairs to bed and had gone into his own room to undress, when a sharp and persistent rattle upon the closed shutters brought him in alarm to his feet. Looking out, he saw a man's figure outlined in the moonlight on the walk, and, at once taking it to be Will, he ran hastily down and unbarred the door. "Come in quietly," he said. "Uncle Tucker is asleep upstairs. What in thunder is the trouble now?" Stepping back, he led the way into what so short a time ago had been Mrs. Blake's parlour, and then pausing in the center of the floor, stood waiting with knitted brows for an explanation of the visit. But Will, who had shrunk dazzled from the flash of the lamp, now lingered to put up the bar with shaking hands. "For God's sake, what is it?" questioned Christopher, and a start shook through him at sight of the other's face. "Have you had a fit?" Closing the parlour door behind him, Will crossed the room and caught at the mantel for support. "I told you I'd do it some day--I told you I'd do it," he said incoherently, in a frantic effort to shift the burden of responsibility upon stronger shoulders. "You might have known all along that I'd do it some day." "Do what?" demanded Christopher, while he felt the current of his blood grow weak. "Out with it, now. Speak up. You're as white as a sheet." "He struck me--he struck me first. The bruise is here," resumed Will, in the same eager attempt at self justification. "Then I hit him on the head with a hammer and his skull gave way. I didn't hit hard. I swear it was a little blow; but he's dead. I left him stone dead in the kitchen. " "My God, man!" exclaimed Christopher, and touched him on the shoulder. With a groan, Will put up his hands and covered his bloodshot eyes. "I didn't mean to do it--I swear I didn't," he protested. "Who'd have thought his head would crush in like that at the first little blow--just a tap with an old hammer? Why, it would hardly have cracked a walnut! And what was the hammer doing there, anyway? They have no business to leave such things lying about on the hearth. It was all their fault--they ought to have put the hammer away." A convulsive shudder ran through him, ending in his hands and feet, which jerked wildly. His face was gray and old--so old that he might have been taken, at the first glance, for a man of eighty, and in the intervals between his words he sucked in his breath with a hissing noise. Meeting Christopher's look, he broke into a spasm of frightened sobs, whimpering like a child that has been whipped. "I told you not to drink again," said Christopher sharply as he struggled to collect his thoughts. "I told you liquor would make a beast of you."