I was waiting for this, and a great tide of joy swept over me as I reflected that after all he had not solved the mystery.  The clasp told nothing, the key told nothing.  The secret was safe as yet.

He must have read my thoughts, for he looked steadily at me out of those dark eyes of his, and then said very slowly and deliberately—­

“Mr. Trenoweth, it grieves me to taunt your miserable case; but do you mind my saying that you are a fool?”

I simply stared in answer.

“Your father was a fool—­a pitiful fool; and you are a fool.  Which would lead me, did I not know better, to believe that your grandfather, Amos Trenoweth, was a fool also.  I should wrong him if I called him that.  He was a villain, a black-hearted, murderous, cold-blooded, damnable villain; but he was only a fool for once in his life, and that was when he trusted in the sense of his descendants.”

His voice, as he spoke of my grandfather, grew suddenly shrill and discordant, while his eyes blazed up in furious wrath.  In a second or two, however, he calmed himself again and went on quietly as before.

“You wonder, perhaps, why I call you a fool.  It is because you have lived for fourteen years with your hand upon riches that would make a king jealous, and have never had the sense to grasp them; it is because you have shut your eyes when you might have seen, have been a beggar when you might have ridden in a carriage.  Upon my word, Mr. Jasper Trenoweth, when I think of your folly I have half a mind to be dog-sick with you myself.”

What could the man mean?  What was this clue which I had never found?

“And all the time it was written upon this key here, as large as life; not only that, but, to leave you no excuse, Amos Trenoweth actually told you that it was written here.”

“What do you mean?” stammered I, forced into speech at last.

“Ah! so you have found your voice, have you?  What do I mean?  Do you mean to say you do not guess even now?  Upon my word, I am loth to kill so fair a fool.”  He regarded me for a moment with pitying contempt, then stretched out his hand and took up my grandfather’s key.

“I read here,” he said, “written very clearly and distinctly, certain words.  You must know those words; but I will repeat them to you to refresh your memory:—­”

    “THY HOUSE IS SET UPON THE SANDS.  AND THY HOPES BY A DEAD MAN.”

“Well?” I asked, for—­fool that I was—­even yet I did not understand.

“Mr. Jasper Trenoweth, did you ever hear tell of such a place as Dead Man’s Rock?”