“It is no doubt a painful matter to you,” said he, with cold politeness, “but my intentions are unalterable. I will prosecute him right through. Nothing you can possibly say will have the slightest effect on my determination.” Then the old man seemed to hug his stout body with his arms, and for the first time a gleam came into his pale eyes and he chuckled softly to himself. At the unexpected sound Sylvester started. Such symptoms pointed to senility. But suddenly the old man turned to him with a quick snarl, in startling contrast with his deliberate manner,-- “I suppose you are not aware, you young fool, that you will be sending your own brother to gaol.” He bent forward, gripping the arms of the chair, fixing Sylvester with an inscrutable gaze, his lips beneath the scrubby white moustache parted and showing his yellow stumps of teeth. “Your brother. Don't you understand?” “What idiocy are you talking?” exclaimed Sylvester, in angry impatience. “I am talking the truth, my young friend. I am a truthful man,” replied Usher, with mocking resumption of his usual habit of speech. “Roderick is your own dear brother.” “You accuse my father of having an illegitimate son?” “Oh, no. Roderick is quite legitimate. He is my son. At least, I quite believed your poor mother.” “My mother--what the devil are you talking about?” cried Sylvester, fiercely. “What has my mother got to do with it?” “Roderick is her son, my dear Sylvester. Hers and mine. She was my wife.” Sylvester glared at him for a moment, and then, the preposterous absurdity of the story dawning upon him, he broke into a contemptuous laugh and turned away. The man was mad. “I think it time we parted,” said Sylvester. Ushers face expressed pained surprise. “You do not believe me?” Then as Sylvester did not reply otherwise than by a shrug, he drew a mass of papers from his breast-pocket and selected therefrom a photograph, old and discoloured, of a man and woman posed in the angular attitudes of the photographer's art in the late fifties, and clad in the uncouth attire of those days. The woman had a baby upon her lap. “Your mother and brother and I,” said Mr. Usher. “I was a handsome young man. I had fine black whiskers.” Sylvester received the picture, looked at it, and a spasm of horrible disgust shook his frame. The young woman was his mother--unmistakably. “She was my dear wife,” said Usher. “And you played the brute beast, I suppose, until she divorced you. And then she married my father. I see,” said Sylvester, grimly. But Usher raised his hand in deprecation. “On the contrary,” said he, “we were never divorced. When I said your father had no illegitimate children, I was wrong. You are an illegitimate child.” Sylvester flung the photograph with a furious gesture into the fire. The old man darted forward to rescue it, but Sylvester roughly pushed him back into his chair, and stood over him trembling with anger. Behind him the photograph curled and flamed.