"Why, of course. It was yourself that brought the news to the Cottage, when I told you how much I regretted not having called upon him, but that I had no notion he was so dangerously ill." "True! I have had much to think of lately, and had forgotten. Well, Ephraim made a very strange statement, which he charged me to repeat to you after he was gone. He had done you a great wrong, and the only reparation he could make was by confessing it." With that Clem went on to detail to John that part of the dead man's confession which concerned him; but said no word about the latter portion--that which dealt with what Ephraim had witnessed through the fanlight. "Poor fellow!--poor fellow!" exclaimed John, when the other had come to an end. "The temptation was a great one, and he was unable to resist it. He was tried beyond his strength, as it may be the lot of any of us to be. It was very wrong of him, not merely to keep back what he knew, but to swear to an untruth; but he is gone where his faults and his virtues will be weighed in the balances which cannot err, and Heaven forbid that I should attempt to blacken his memory by a single word. So, if you please, Mr. Clement, you and I will keep the poor fellow's confession to ourselves. It could do no possible good at this late date to make it public." Later in the day Clement sought his brother. "I have told John Brancker everything, or next to everything," he began abruptly. "I could no longer reconcile it to my conscience to keep him in ignorance of what was of such vital concern to him." "I felt nearly sure that you would be guilty of some such fool's trick," was Edward's stern rejoinder. Then he added, with a sneer, "I hope you will be able to reconcile the article you call your conscience to the disgrace and ruin which will inevitably result from your mad action. The thought of your mother and sister might have restrained you, if nothing else had power to do so." "Neither disgrace nor ruin will result from what I have done," answered Clem, quietly. "John Brancker will make no use of what I have told him. Except to his sister, he will breathe no word of it to a living creature." Edward looked at him with eyes that expressed nothing but blank amazement. "If it be as you say," he presently remarked, "then is John Brancker one of the noblest-hearted of men." "It is as I say. I have his word for it." "Ah!" said Edward, with an indrawing of his breath. "You can hardly realize what a weight you have lifted off my mind. It meant more to me than even you are aware of, that both the manner and the cause of our father's death should never be divulged. You said just now that you had told John Brancker 'next to everything.' May I ask what you meant by that particular phrase?" "I told him nothing which would lead him to infer that the facts of the case had become known either to you or me until quite lately. Then, again, I said nothing to him of what Ephraim Judd saw through the fanlight."