We carried Peggy into my room and laid her on the bed that had been Jason’s. Her hours must be numbered, I thought as I looked at the gray features, already growing spectral in the rising fog of death. Turning from that old fallen stump, Dr. Crackenthorpe suddenly faced me, a smile on his crackled lips. “So,” he said, “on the top of that confession, you sought to convince me against your own judgment?” “I haven’t a thought to deny it. I value it at nothing. He has fed on a baseless chimera, at your instigation--yes, you needn’t lie--till his mind is sick with disease. What does it matter? I know him and I stake my soul on his innocence. I asked you to ease his mind--not mine. I tell you in a word”--I strode up to him and spoke slowly and fiercely--“my father had no hand in Modred’s death and I believe you know it.” He backed from me a little, breathing hard, when a sound from the bed stopped him. I started and turned. The old woman’s hand was up to her neck. Her sick eyes were moving from the one to the other of us in a lost, questioning way; a murmur was in her lean, pulsing throat. “Lie quiet, Peggy,” I said; “you may be able to speak in a minute if you lie quiet.” The words seemed only to increase the panic in her. With a gurgling burst a fragment of speech came from her mouth: “Be I passing?” The doctor heard it. “Yes,” he said, brutally. She appeared to collapse and shrink inward; but in a moment she was up, leaning on her elbow, and her face was terrible to look at. “’Twas I killed the boy!” she cried, with a sort of breathless wail; “tell him--tell Ralph,” and so fell back, and I thought the life was gone from her. Was I base and cruel in my triumph? I rose erect, indifferent to the tortured soul stretched beneath me. “Who was right?” I cried. “Believe me now, you dog; and growl and curse your fill over the wreck of your futile villainy!” His mouth was set in an incredulous grinning line. I brushed sternly past him, making for my father’s room. I could not pause or wait a moment. The poor soul’s long anguish should be ended there and then. As I stooped over his bed I saw that some change had come upon him in sleep. The twist of his mouth was relaxed. His face had assumed something of its normal expression. I seized up the tablet from where it had tumbled on the floor. I smeared it with a fresh coating from the saucer. His first waking eyes, I swore, should look upon the written evidence of his acquittal. While I was waiting for the stuff to dry, he stirred, murmured and opened his eyes. “Renalt!” he said, in a very low, weak voice. Speech had returned to him. I knelt by his side and passed my tremulous arms underneath him.