I was a good deal relieved to hear Calbot speak thus affectionately of our relations with each other; and indeed he appeared no way inclined to violence. Accordingly, having offered him a Cabana (which he refused), I put the box and the decanter back in the cupboard, and locked the door. Then, relighting my own cigar, and putting a lump or two of coal on the fire, I resumed my chair, and bade my friend begin his story. VI. "There was an intermarriage between the Burleighs and the Calbots four or five generations ago," said he; "I found the record of it in our family papers, shortly before Miss Burleigh and I were engaged; but it appears not to have turned out well. I don't know whether the husband and wife quarrelled, or whether their troubles came from some outside interference; but they had not been long married before a separation took place--not a regular divorce, but the wife went quietly back to her fathers house, and my ancestor is supposed to have gone abroad. But this was not the end of it, Drayton; for, some years later, the husband returned, and he and his wife lived together again." "Was there any further estrangement between them, afterwards?" "It is an ugly story," said Calbot, gloomily, getting up from his chair, and taking his old place before the fire. "No; they lived together--as long as they did live! But it was about the era of the witchcraft mania--or delusion, if you choose to call it so--and it is strongly hinted in some of the documents in my possession that the Calbots were--not witches--but victims of witchcraft. They accused no one, but they seemed to have been shunned by everybody like persons under the shadow of a curse. Well--it wasn't a great while before Mrs. Calbot died, and her husband went mad soon afterwards. There were two children. One of them, the son, was born before the first separation. The other, a daughter, came into the world after the reunion, and she was an idiot!" "An ugly story, sure enough," said I, shrugging my shoulders with a chilly sensation; "but what has it to do with your business?" "Perhaps nothing; but there is one thing which would go for nothing in the way of legal evidence, but which has impressed me, nevertheless. The date of the second coming-together of my ancestor and his wife was 1698." "Well?" "If you look at that paper I gave you you'll see the date of Armstrong's death is also 1698." "Still I don't see the point."