In spite of the confidence with which he had rung the bell, Ford found it difficult now to begin.  It was only after one or two inarticulate attempts that he was able to say anything.

“I asked you to come in, sir,” he began, haltingly, “to tell you something very special.  Miss Strange knows it already....  If I’ve done wrong in not telling you before ... you’ll see I’m prepared to take my punishment....  My name isn’t Strange ... it isn’t Herbert.”

“I know it isn’t.”

The words slipped out in a sharp tone, not quite nervous, but thin and worn.  Miriam’s attitude grew tense.  Ford took a step forward from the fireside.  With his arm flung over the back of his chair, and his knee resting on the seat of it, he strained across the table, as if to annihilate the space between Wayne and himself.

“You knew?”

The blind man nodded.  When he spoke it was again into the air.

“Yes; I knew.  You’re Norrie Ford.  I ought to say I’ve only known it latterly—­about a fortnight now.”

“How?”

“Oh, it just came to me—­by degrees, I think.”

“Why didn’t you say something about it?”

“I thought I wouldn’t.  It has worried me, but I thought I’d keep still.”

“Do you mean that you were going to let everything—­go on?”

“I weighed all the considerations.  That’s the decision I came to.  You must understand,” he went on to explain, in a voice that was now tremulous as well as thin, “that I’d had you a good deal on my mind, during these past eight years.  I sentenced you to death when I almost knew you were innocent.  It was my duty.  I couldn’t help it.  The facts told dead against you.  Every one admitted that.  True, the evidence might have been twisted to tell against old Gramm and his wife, but they hadn’t been dissipated, and they hadn’t been indicted, and they hadn’t gone round making threats against Chris Ford’s life like you.”

“I didn’t mean them.  It was nothing but a boy’s rage—­”

“Yes, but you made them; and when the old man was found—­But I’ll not go into that now.  I only want to say that, while I couldn’t acquit you with my intelligence, I felt constrained to do it in my heart, especially when everything was over, and it was too late.  The incident has been the one thing in my professional career that I’ve most regretted.  I don’t quite blame myself.  I had to do my duty.  And yet it was a relief to me when you got away.  I don’t know that I could have acted differently, but—­but I liked you.  I’ve gone on liking you.  I’ve often thought about you, and wondered what had become of you.  And one day—­not long ago—­as I was going over the old ground once more, I saw I’d been thinking about—­you.  That’s how it came to me.”

“And you were going to remain silent, and let me marry Evie?”

The blind man reflected.