‘Cursed by your father, and cursed by God—­’

’That curse—­for what it may be worth—­I take upon my own head; the curse shall be mine.  Even if I believed the threat about the “desolate places,” I would be there; if bare-footed she had to beg from door to door, rest assured, mother, that an Aylwin would hold the wallet—­would leave the whole Aylwin brood, their rank, their money, and their stupid, vulgar British pride, to walk beside the beggar.’

The look on my mother’s face would have terrified most people.  It would have terrified me once, but in the frenzy into which I had then passed, nothing would have made me quail.

‘Your services, mother, are no longer needed,’ I said.  ’Wynne’s corpse might have been washed up by the tide, and your compact was to be there to see; but now, most likely, it is hidden, not under the loose fragments as I had feared, but under the great mass of earth,—­hidden for ever.’

‘But you forget,’ said my mother, ’that the amulet has to be recovered.’

‘Mother,’ I said, in the state of wild suspiciousness concerning her and her motives into which I had now passed, ’I know what your words imply,—­that Winifred is not yet out of danger; the evidence of the curse and the crime can be dug up.’

‘I have no wish to harm the girl, Henry.  You mistake me.’

‘Then, mother, we must not mistake each other in this matter,’ I said.  ’You have alluded to the word of an Aylwin.  With me, as with the best of us, the word of an Aylwin is an oath.  Wynne’s corpse is now hidden; the cross is now hidden; I give you the word of an Aylwin that the man who digs up that corpse I will kill.  I will not consider that he is an irresponsible agent of yours; I will kill him, and his blood shall be upon the head of her who sends him, knowing, to his death.’

‘And be hanged,’ said my mother.

’Perhaps.  But after her father’s crime has been exposed, the first thing for me is—­to kill!’

‘Why, boy, there’s murder in your eyes!’ said my mother, taken off her guard.

’Oh, mother, mother, can you not see that no wolf with a stolen lamb in its mouth was ever more pitilessly shot down by the owner of that lamb than any hireling wolf of yours would be shot down by me?’

‘Boy, are you quite demented?’

’Listen, mother.  To prevent Winifred from knowing that her father had stolen that amulet, and so brought down upon her the curse, I would have drowned her with myself in the tide.  We sat waiting for the tide to drown us, when the settlement came at the last moment and buried it away from her.  Is it likely that I should hesitate to kill a clodhopper, or a score, if only to take my vengeance on you and Fate?  The homicide now will be yours.’

She left, giving me a glance of defiance; but before our eyes ended that conflict, I saw which of us had conquered.