“What did you hope about me? I should be glad of any approach. I grieved for your brother as if he had been mine. Oh more, I think, more! if it had been poor John who had died----” “It would have been better,” said the young man. “Yes, yes, Miss Musgrave, that is what I feel; Walter had the best of it. Your brother has been more than killed. But I came to say, that so far as we are concerned, there need not be any more misery. Let him come home, Miss Musgrave, let him come home! We none of us can tell now how Walter died.” Mary was moved beyond the power of words. She got up hastily and took his hand, and pressed it between her own. “Thank you, I shall always thank you!” she cried, “whether he comes home or not. Oh, my dear boy, who are you that come with mercy on your lips? You are not like the rest of us!” Mary was thinking of others, more near, whose wrongs were not as the Stantons’, but whom nothing could induce to forgive. “I am my mother’s son,” said Geoff, his eyes brighter than usual, with a smile lighting up the moisture in them. What Mary said seemed a tribute to his mother, and this made him glad. “She does not know, but she would say so. Let him come home. I heard of the children, and that your brother----” “Yes,” said Miss Musgrave, “from Mary. She told you. She always took an interest in him. Do you know,” she added in a low voice of horror, “that there is a verdict against him, a coroner’s verdict of murder?” She shuddered at the word as she said it, and so did he. “But not a just one. No jury would say it was--that: not now----” “Heaven knows what a jury would say. It is all half forgotten now; and as for the dates, and all those trifles that tell in a trial, who knows anything about them? Even I--could I swear to the hour my brother went out that morning? I could once, and did, and it is all written down. But I don’t seem sure of anything now, not that there ever was a Walter Stanton, or that I had a brother John; and I am one of the interested; the people who were not specially interested, do you think they would have better memories? Ah, no; and he fled; God help him! I don’t know why he did it. That was against him; though I don’t think anyone believes that John Musgrave did _that_, now.” “I am sure they do not, and that is why I came. Let him come home, Miss Musgrave. He would not have been convicted had he been tried. I have been reading it all up, and I have taken advice. He would be cleared. And if there is risk in it, we would all stand by him. I would stand by him,” said the young man with a generous flush of resolution, “so much as I am worth. I want you to tell him so. Tell him to come home.” Mary shook her head. How long she had been calm about this terrible domestic tragedy, and how it all rose upon her now! She got up, in her agitation, and walked about the room.