“Well, sir,”--Mr. Morley came closer; he cast an anxious glance around him; he dropped his voice--“I’m not a talkative man, not as a rule, as any one who knows me will tell you; but I’ve got something to say which I feel I must say to some one, though you heard what Dr. Hume said. But, perhaps, sir, as you’re Mr. Edwin’s friend, you’re Mr. Philip’s too.” “Mr. Morley, in making any statement to me, you will be at least as safe as if you made it to Dr. Hume. I tell you that I believe your master’s hands are clean. To prove it, we shall have to establish the truth. If you have anything to say which will go to make the darkness light, say it, like a man, before it’s too late.” “You won’t use it to do him a disservice? And you won’t say that I talked about him in a way I didn’t ought to have done?” “I will do neither of these things.” “Well, sir, I like your looks; you look like the kind of gentleman one can trust, and I flatter myself I’m a pretty good judge of faces; and--and the way you handled Dr. Hume was”--he coughed behind his hand--“queer. I’ll make a clean breast of it.” The old gentleman’s hesitation had its amusing side; I was conscious that something very unusual had happened to throw him, to such a degree, off his mental balance. “That’s right, Mr. Morley; we shall soon arrive at an understanding if we are frank with one another. Sit down.” He sat down on the edge of a chair. His hat he placed beside him on the floor, crown uppermost. “Well, sir”--with his gloved fingers he stroked his chin, still regarding me with an air of dubitation--“I’m afraid that Mr. Edwin was not all that he ought to have been.” “I am afraid that something similar could be said of all of us.” “It was in money matters chiefly, though there were other things as well; but in money matters he was most irregular--quite unlike Mr. Philip. Mr. Philip has let him have thousands and thousands of pounds; what he did with it was a mystery. They quarrelled dreadfully.” “Brothers will quarrel, Mr. Morley. It’s a way they have.” The old gentleman shook his head. “Ah, but the fault was Mr. Edwin’s. Mr. Philip is hot-tempered, but Mr. Edwin was always in the wrong.” Leaning towards me, Mr. Morley whispered, under cover of his hand, “Once Mr. Philip thrashed him--broke his stick across his back, he did; Mr. Edwin must have been black and blue with bruises. Mr. Philip’s very quick when he’s roused, and he’s a better man than his brother. He was very sorry afterwards for what he had done--dear me! how sorry he was. He went to his brother and he asked him to forgive him, and Mr. Edwin did forgive him; I expect he got a good deal more money out of Mr. Philip, or he never would have done. He was unforgiving enough, was Mr. Edwin, unless it paid him to be otherwise; he’d wait for years for a chance of returning, with good thumping interest, what he thought was an injury; it was the only thing he ever did return with interest.”