where I had taken such awful part in that phantom tragedy of evil; then Alan threw his arm round me, and drew me hastily on in front of the cabinet.  Without a pause, giving himself time neither to speak nor think, he stretched out his left hand and moved the buttons one after another.  How or in what direction he moved them I know not; but as the last turned with a click, the doors, which no mortal hand had unclosed for three hundred years, flew back, and the cabinet stood open.  I gave a little gasp of fear.  Alan pressed his lips closely together, and turned to me with eager questioning in his eyes.  I pointed in answer tremblingly at the drawer which I had seen open the night before.  He drew it out, and there on its satin bed lay the dagger in its silver sheath.  Still without a word he took it up, and reaching his right hand round me, for I could not now have stood had he withdrawn his support, with a swift strong jerk he unsheathed the blade.  There in the clear autumn sunshine I could see the same dull stains I had marked in the flickering candle-light, and over them, still ruddy and moist, were the drops of my own half-dried blood.  I grasped the lapel of his coat with both my hands, and clung to him like a child in terror, while the eyes of both of us remained fixed as if fascinated upon the knife-blade.  Then, with a sudden start of memory, Alan raised his to the cornice of the cabinet, and mine followed.  No change that I could detect had taken place in that twisted goldwork; but there, clear in the sight of us both, stood forth the words of the magic motto: 

     “Pure blood shed by the blood-stained knife
      Ends Mervyn shame, heals Mervyn strife.”

In low steady tones Alan read out the lines, and then there was silence—­on my part of stunned bewilderment, the bewilderment of a spirit overwhelmed beyond the power of comprehension by rushing, conflicting emotions.  Alan pressed me closer to him, while the silence seemed to throb with the beating of his heart and the panting of his breath.  But except for that he remained motionless, gazing at the golden message before him.  At length I felt a movement, and looking up saw his face turned down towards mine, the lips quivering, the cheeks flushed, the eyes soft with passionate feeling.  “We are saved, my darling,” he whispered; “saved, and through you.”  Then he bent his head lower, and there in that room of horror, I received the first long lover’s kiss from my own dear husband’s lips.

. . . . . .

My husband, yes; but not till some time after that.  Alan’s first act, when he had once fully realized that the curse was indeed removed, was—­throwing his budding practice to the winds—­to set sail for America.  There he sought out Jack, and labored hard to impart to him some of his own newfound hope.  It was slow work, but he succeeded at last; and only left him when, two years later, he