“Look!” he said, “I have tried to read a lesson of a spider as Bruce did. I broke and tangled the little fellow’s web like a wanton and what did he do but roll the rubbish up into a ball and swallow it. I can’t get rid of my web in that way, Renny.” I did my utmost to hold him to his softer mind. He would not listen, but drove me from him. “Cut me my stick,” he said, “or I shall have to crawl down the road on all fours.” I did his bidding sadly. Propped up by me on one side, he was able with the help of his staff to limp painfully from the field. Outside it, he sat himself down on the hedge bank. “Good-morning, Mr. Trender,” he said. “Duke, let me at least help you to the town.” “Not a step, I’m obliged to you. I shall get on very well by and by. Good-morning.” I seized and shook his hand--it dropped listlessly from mine--hesitated; looked in his face, and, turning from him, strode sorrowfully off homeward. CHAPTER XL. A STORY AND ITS SEQUEL. Nine months had passed since my parting with Duke on the hillside, and my life in the interval had flowed on with an easy uneventful monotony that was at least restorative to my turbulent soul. We had not once heard during this stretch of time from Jason or Zyp, and could only conclude that, finding asylum in some remote corner of the world, they would not risk discovery in it by word or sign. Letters, like homing pigeons, sometimes go astray. Duke had put in no second appearance. Dr. Crackenthorpe kept entirely aloof. All the tragedy of that dark period, crushed within a single year of existence, seemed swept by and scattered like so much road dust. Only my father and I remained of the strutting and fretting actors to brood over the parts we had played; and one of us was gray at heart forevermore, and the other waxing halt and old and feeble. Now, often I tried to put the vexing problem of my brother’s death behind me; and yet, if I thought for a moment I had succeeded, it was only to be conscious of a grinning skeleton at my back. And in this year a strange and tragic thing happened in Winton that was indirectly the cause in me of a fresh fungus growth of doubt and dark suspicion; and it fell out in this wise: