"They'll know soon enough," said Thickens grimly. A curious feeling of horror came over Bayle, as he heard these words, the cold, damp dew gathered on his brow, his hands felt moist, and his heart began to beat heavily. He could not have told why this was, only that a vague sense of some terrible horror oppressed him. He felt that he was about to receive some blow, and that he was weak, unnerved, and unprepared for the shock, just when he required all his faculties to be at their strongest and best. And yet the clerk had said so little--nothing that could be considered as leading up to the horror the hearer foresaw. All the same though, Bayle's imagination seized upon the few scant words--those few dry bones of utterance, clothed them with flesh, and made of them giants of terror before whose presence he shook and felt cowed. "Tell me," he said at last, and his voice sounded strange to him, "tell me all." There was another pause, and then Thickens, who looked singularly troubled and grey, sat up. "Yes," he said, "I'll tell you all. I can trust you, Mr Bayle. I don't come to you because you are a priest, but because you are a man--a gentleman who will help me, and I want to do what's right." "I know--I believe you do, Thickens," said the curate huskily, and he looked at him almost reproachfully, as if blaming him for the pain that he was about to give. He felt all this. He could not have explained why, but as plainly as if he had been forewarned, he knew that some terrible blow was about to fall. Thickens sat staring straight before him now, gnawing hard at one of his nails, and looking like a man having a hard struggle with himself. It was a very plainly-furnished but pleasant little room, whose wide, low window had a broad sill upon which some half-dozen flowers bloomed, and just then, as the two men sat facing each other, the last glow of evening lit up the curate's troubled face, and left that of Thickens more and more in the shade. "That's better," he said with a half laugh. "I wish I had left it till it was dark. Look here, Mr Bayle, I've been in trouble these five years past." "You?" "Yes, sir. I say it again: I've been in trouble these six or seven years past, and it's been a trouble that began like a little cloud as you'd say--no bigger than a man's hand; and it grew slowly bigger and bigger, till it's got to be a great, thick, black darkness, covering everything before the storm bursts." "Don't talk riddles, man; speak out." "Parables, Mr Bayle, sir, parables. Give me time, sir, give me time. You don't know what it is to a man who has trained himself from a boy to be close and keep secrets, to have to bring them out of himself and lay them all bare." "I'll be patient; but you are torturing me. Go on." "I felt it would, and that's one of the things that's kept me back, sir; but I'm going to speak now." "Go on."