For some brief time it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the look of one struck with a mortal sickness. "I think--I think you owe me something now beyond your keeping, Captain Ireton," he quavered, at length, mumbling the words as do the palsied. "Since you are Margery's father, I owe you anything a dying man can pay," said I. "Words; empty words," he fumed. "If it were a thing to do, now--" "You need but name the thing and I will do it willingly." Instead of naming it he shot a question at me, driving it home with certain random thrustings of the shifty eyes. "Who is your next of kin, Captain Ireton?" "Septimus, of the same name, master of Iretondene, on the James River, and a major in the Virginia line," I answered, wondering how my cousin once removed should figure in the present coil. But Gilbert Stair's next question dispelled the mystery. "If you should die intestate, this Septimus would be your heir?" "As next of kin, I should suppose he would. But I have nothing to devise." "True; and yet"--he paused again as if the wording of it were not easy. "Be free to speak your mind, Mr. Stair," said I. "'Tis this," he cried, gathering himself as with an effort. "You've claimed my daughter as your wife before them all, and when you die to-morrow morning you'll leave her neither wife nor maid. I think--I think you'd best make that lie of yours the truth." If one of his thin hands that clutched the chair arms had pressed a secret spring and loosed a trap to send me gasping down an oubliette, I should have been the less astounded. Indeed, for some short space I thought him mad; yet, on second thought, I saw the method in his madness. Could Margery be brought to view it calmly, this was a sword to cut the knot of all entanglements.