Willy seemed to find happiness in the prospect, remote as it might be.  Ralph’s breast heaved as he looked upon his brother’s brightening face.  That secret of his own heart must lie forever buried there.  Yes, he had already resolved upon that.  He should never darken the future that lay pictured in those radiant eyes.  But this was a moment of agony nevertheless.  Ralph was following the funeral of the mightiest passion of his soul.  He got up and opened the door.

“Good night, and God bless you!” he said huskily.

“One moment, Ralph.  Did you see two men, strangers, on the road to-night?  Ah, I remember, you came in at the back.”

“Two friends of Joe Garth’s,” said Ralph, closing the door behind him.

When he reached his own room he sat for some minutes on the bed.  What were the feelings that preyed upon him?  He hardly knew.  His heart was desolate.  His life seemed to be losing its hope, or his hope its object.  And not yet had he reached the worst.  Some dread forewarning of a sterner fate seemed to hang above him.

Rising, Ralph threw off his shoes, and drew on a pair of stouter ones.  Then he laced up a pair of leathern leggings, and, taking down a heavy cloak from behind the door, he put it across his arm.  He had no light but the light of the moon.

Stepping quietly along the creaky old corridor to the room where his father lay, Ralph opened the door and entered.  A clod of red turf smouldered on the hearth, and the warm glow from it mingled with the cold blue of the moonlight.  How full of the odor of a dead age the room now seemed to be!  The roof was opened through the rude timbers to the whitened thatch.  Sheepskins were scattered about the black oaken floor.  Ralph walked to the chimney-breast, and stood on one of the skins as he leaned on the rannel-tree shelf.  How still and cheerless it all was!

The room stretched from the front to the back of the house, and had a window at each end.  The moon that shone through the window at the front cast its light across the foot of the bed.  Ralph had come to bid his last good-night to him who lay thereon.  It was in this room that he himself had been born.  He might never enter it again.

How the strong man was laid low!  All his pride of strength had shrunk to this!  “The lofty looks of men shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down.”  What indeed was man, whose breath was in his nostrils!

The light was creeping up the bed.  Silent was he who lay there as the secret which he had never discharged even to his deaf pillow.  Had that secret mutinied in the heart that knew its purple war no more?  Ah! how true it was that conscience was a thousand swords.  With no witness against him except himself, whither could he have fled from the accusation that burned within him as a fire!  Not chains nor cells could have spoken to this strong man like the awful voice of his solitary heart.  How remorse must have corroded that heart!  How he must have numbered the hours of that remorse!  How one sanguinary deed must have trampled away all joyous memories!  But the secret agony was over at last:  it was over now.