"Mr. Willcoxen!" she repeated, laying her hand upon his arm. He looked up. The expression of haggard despair softened out of his countenance. "Is it you, my dear?" he said. "What has brought you here, Miriam? Were you afraid of the storm? There is no danger, dear child--it has nearly expended its force, and will soon be over--but sit down." "Oh, no! it is not the storm that has brought me here, though I scarcely remember a storm so violent at this season of the year, except one--this night seven years ago--the night that Marian Mayfield was murdered!" He started--it is true that he had been thinking of the same dread tragedy--but to hear it suddenly mentioned pierced him like an unexpected sword thrust. Miriam proceeded, speaking in a strange, level monotone, as if unwilling or afraid to trust her voice far: "I came this evening to restore a small but costly article of _virtu_, belonging to you, and left in my care some time ago by the boy Melchisedek. It is an antique dagger--somewhat rusty and spotted. Here it is." And she laid the poniard down upon the tress of hair before him. He sprang up as if it had been a viper--his whole frame shook, and the perspiration started from his livid forehead. Miriam, keeping her eye upon him, took the dagger up. "It is very rusty, and very much streaked," she said. "I wonder what these dark streaks can be? They run along the edge, from the extreme point of the blade, upwards toward the handle; they look to me like the stains of blood--as if a murderer had stabbed his victim with it, and in his haste to escape had forgotten to wipe the blade, but had left the blood upon it, to curdle and corrode the steel. See! don't it look so to you?" she said, approaching him, and holding the weapon up to his view. "Girl! girl! what do you mean?" he exclaimed, throwing his hand across his eyes, and hurrying across the room. Miriam flung down the weapon with a force that made its metal ring upon the floor, and hastening after him, she stood before him; her dark eyes fixed upon his, streaming with insufferable and consuming fire, that seemed to burn through into his brain. She said: "I have heard of fiends in the human shape, nay, I have heard of Satan in the guise of an angel of light! Are you such that stand before me now?" "Miriam, what do you mean?" he asked, in sorrowful astonishment. "This is what I mean! That the mystery of Marian Mayfield's fate, the secret of your long remorse, is no longer hidden! I charge you with the murder of Marian Mayfield!" "Miriam, you are mad!" "Oh! well for me, and better still for you, if I were mad!" He was tremendously shaken, more by the vivid memories she recalled than by the astounding charge she made. "In the name of Heaven, what leads you to imagine such impossible guilt!"