at last, threateningly. “I will deliver your message, but you will regret it. Remember that!”

“I assure you I have no fear,” laughed the old rector. “While Gordon Gray acted honestly as the friend I believed him to be, I remained his friend. Now that we are enemies it is I who can—and will—speak in self-defence. He threatens me with ruin, but little does he dream what I know concerning the young fellow’s death and who was implicated in it—how the snare was set to ruin him, and afterwards to close his lips!”

The handsome woman shrugged her shoulders, but her face had entirely changed. She had been taken entirely aback by the open defiance of the man who, in her fierce vindictiveness, she had intended should be her victim. She had believed the hour of her triumph to be at hand, instead of which she saw that an abyss had opened before her—one into which she and her accomplice Gray must assuredly fall unless they trod a very narrow and intricate path.

“Very well,” she laughed with well-feigned defiance. “I will give Gordon your message. And we shall see!”

With those words she passed to the heavy plush curtains and disappeared behind them out upon the lawn, beyond which, separated only by a wire fence, lay a small and picturesque wood which ran down the hill for a quarter of a mile or so.

Old Mr Homfray followed her, and with a sigh, closed the long glass door and bolted it.

Then, returning to the fireplace, he stood upon the hearthrug with folded arms, thinking deeply, faintly murmured words escaping his pale lips.

“Roddy must never know!” he repeated.

“If he knew the truth concerning that slip in my past what would he think of me? He would regard his father as a liar and a hypocrite!”

Again he remained silent for a considerable time.

“Gordon Gray!” he muttered. “It seems impossible that he should rise from the grave and become my enemy, after all I have done in his interests. I believed him to be my friend! But he is under the influence of that woman—that woman who means to ruin me because I refused to render her assistance in that vile scheme of hers!”

Suddenly, as he stood there before the blazing logs, he recollected the sixth chapter of St. Luke.

“Love your enemies,” he repeated aloud. “Do good to those who hate you. And unto 

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