“Where!” he shrieked. “Give me the key if you pity me! It is that has kept me hunting these long years, ravenous like the dogs that devoured Sin, their mother, and yet were unappeased. Give me the key; give me rest, or here and now the waters of oblivion!” For an instant I really believed he was going to rise and plunge. Had he done so, I doubt if, in our weakened condition, we could have saved him a second time. But in the thought, he had clutched at himself once more; and his passion grew inarticulate, and ceased. When at last he resumed his tale, it was with a manner of some suffering shame. “Richard,” he said, “touch me there and I am mad. Rebuke me with thine eyes, sweet boy, and I am sane and sorry. I will not offend again. Listen, the story breaks off with the night of our quarrel--Abel’s and mine. He had discovered and was reading this letter spread out before him on the table, when I came up unnoticed behind him and read over his shoulder. The confession was all there, to the flight of the murderer and his subsequent life of crime; to the agony of his haunted soul and his desire, in the shadow of death, to make restitution. Some words by the chaplain followed; some prayer of the weak soul to his stronger confidant to guide him in this pass, whether for action or unconcern. And at the foot of the sheet he ended with the words. ‘_And the confessed Place and deposit of this treasure are_----’ and there passed over the page, and I never learned them, was never to learn them, Richard. ... Some sound I made roused Abel from his absorption. He leapt to his feet, cramming the paper into his pocket, and faced me. “‘Well, where are they?’ I asked, smiling. Yet in that moment I knew he would never tell me. “‘Miles under the sea, probably, by this time,’ he answered. ‘You will understand that, if you have pryed to any purpose.’ “‘Abel,’ I said quietly, ‘you are lying. The place still exists, or you would not wish to conceal its name from me.’ “‘Well,’ he said, with an evil grin, ‘the book is mine, and the secret with it. You disputed its purchase, remember.’ “‘I may have,’ I replied. ‘But bought it is, and with our money--_our_ money, Abel. I will not yield my right to a share in it.’