But all was silent in the death-stricken house; not a sound, save the loud ticking of the clock downstairs, and the deep throbs of his own heart, could Horace hear as he stood, stealthy and desperate, at the door of his father's room. Susan's face, innocent and wondering; Uncle Edward's benign countenance, disapproving and sad; and, still more dangerous, Peggy's troubled eyes, watching where he went and what he did, haunted his imagination. He could fancy them all grouped together under covert somewhere, watching that guilty, stealthy pause of his--watching his secret, clandestine footsteps as he stole downstairs. But still he did go down, in the breathless cowardice of his conscious crime; fearing everything, yet with all his mind fixed, in an intensity which was half insane, upon that dumb witness against him. He did not expect to find it. He could have supposed it possessed by some malicious spirit, and with an actual animate will working against him; but he could not rest till he had, through every corner, sought it out--if, perhaps, it could be found. When he had got downstairs he paused again to consider where he should go; a faint sound of Peggy's voice in the kitchen, and the slight stir made now and then for a moment by Colonel Sutherland in the dining parlour, confused and stopped him in his course. He stood for a moment irresolute and breathless, not seeing what to do, and then almost involuntarily opened the closed door of Mr. Scarsdale's study. The recluse was dead, and could harm no man now; but he was alive when his guilty son stepped into that room so deeply instinct with his presence, where now more than ever he lived and had his sure abode. Almost more awful than the actual presence of the dead was that presence unseen and terrible, the invisible life of life, which death could not touch, and which should remain here for ever. Horace dared scarcely breathe the air of this deserted room. An hour's imprisonment in it, in his present state of mind, would have driven him into mad superstition, if not to positive frenzy; but he saw something there, set out almost with ostentation on the table, which would have drawn him through fire and water. There it stood, solemnly by itself, the books and papers cleared away from its immediate vicinity, in malign and mischievous state, calling the attention of everyone who entered. Horace made his shuddering way forward, and seized upon it with the grasp of desperation. Yes, there it was, with all its evidence within his own reach, and safe, if he willed it so, to harm him no more!