“See there!” I cried. “You scream before you are touched even. A pretty fool you, to gauge the meaning of any noise but your own gobbling over a slice of bread and bacon.” This was to the humor of the others, who cackled hoarsely with laughter. “If you want to ask questions,” I said, turning upon them, “put them to this doctor here, who sits every day in a room with a row of murderers’ heads looking down upon him.” With that I walked off in a heat, and was going toward the house, when Dr. Crackenthorpe came after me with a stride and a furious menace. “You’ll turn the tables, will you?” he said, in a suffocating voice. “Some day, my friend--some day!” I didn’t answer him or even look his way, but strode into the mill and banged the door in his face. As I entered our sitting-room, I found Jason standing motionless in the shadow a few feet from my father’s chair. The old man welcomed me with an agonized cry of rapture, and endeavored to struggle to his feet, but dropped back again as if exhausted. I went and stood over him, and he clung to one of my hands, as a drowning man might. “Who cried out just now?” I asked, fiercely, of Jason. He gulped and cleared his throat, but could only point nervelessly at the cowering figure before him. “Father! What is the matter?” “You wouldn’t come, Renalt--you wouldn’t come! I prayed for you to come.” “What has he been doing?” “It was all the old horror over again. Send him away! Don’t let him come near me!” I was falling distracted. I turned to Jason once more. “Come! Out with it!” I said. “What have you been doing?” He strove to smile. His face was ghastly--pinched and lined. “Nothing,” he said at last, with a choking cluck in his throat. “I have done nothing.” “Don’t believe him,” moaned my father. “He wanted all; he wanted to sink me to ruin.” “I wanted to ruin nobody!” cried my brother, finding his voice in a wail of despair. “I’m desperate, that’s all--desperate to escape--and he offers me little more than he’d give to a beggar.” “I tell him I’m not far from one myself! He won’t believe it. He threatened me, Renalt. He brought the hideous time back again.” A light broke upon me, as from a furnace door snapped open. “Dad,” I said, gently, “will you go to your room and leave the rest to me?” I helped him to his feet--across the room. His eyes watched the other all the time. It was pitiful to see his terror of him. Jason stood where he had planted himself, waiting my return with hanging head and fingers laced in front of him. I led the old man to the foot of the stairs. Then I returned to the room and stood before my brother. “I understand it all now,” I said, in a straight, quiet voice. “The ‘some one else’ you suspected, or pretended to, was our father!” No answer. “While I was in London you traded upon this pretended knowledge to force money out of the old man.” No answer.