About half an hour afterwards, my heart leaped within me as I caught the sound of Ludovico’s cautiously approaching steps--for on such occasions he strove to steal in unnoticed--and I rushed to the door. There indeed he was coming up the walk in front. But what a figure!--his eyes were bloodshot, his face haggard, his dress disordered, his gait uneven, and altogether he appeared still under the power of a deep overnight debauch. My father upon hearing rose to meet him, and at the sight of his agitated and afflicted features, Ludovico, overcome with dismay and confusion, only afforded confirmatory evidence of guilt. Without a word, my father beckoned with his hand to him, and walking into the room, pointed to the forced and vacant box, fixing his eyes sternly and accusingly upon my poor brother, who with fainting knees accompanied him. With constrained silence he then lifted up the broken knife from the floor, fitted it before Ludovico’s eyes to the fragment remaining in the lid, and then turning up the haft, presented it to him. A cry of dismay and horror broke from his lips as he recognized his knife, and the terrible truth burst upon him. ‘I am innocent, oh, my father, I am innocent,’ he cried as he fell on his knees before him. But, alas, the action, in place of removing, was about to rivet the evidence of his guilt, for as he stooped, a key fell from his pocket--a false one for the door which led from the very room into the garden, which he had privately procured for the purpose of secret admission when belated in his revels. My father, without other reply, seized it, applied it to the door, and opened the lock. He then turned to him, as if every stay and doubt were banished, and with a voice in which pain and sorrow only aggravated passion, exclaimed, ‘Wretched boy, I disown thee! Never shall villain, gambler, robber, liar, be called son of mine. Away, then, from my presence and my roof for ever! He who could so basely forget every lesson of honesty he was taught from his childhood, who could plunder his poor sister of what we have painfully earned for her by the sweat of our brows, and doom her to hopelessness and life-long loneliness, to feed his own vile profligacy, would not scruple to dip his hand in blood, ay, in the blood of his household, for their inheritance. We are not safe with such a one. Away to your brigand comrades of the hills--lead the villain life you incline to--do what you will--but never cross this threshold again!’ My mother and Bianca, roused by the noise, now hurried fearfully into the room, and a glance at Ludovico’s horror-struck and supplicating posture, at the shattered box, and my father’s inflamed and convulsed countenance, was enough without words to inform them of the revolting truth.