"I will just tell you what we propose to do.

You are to go back to prison and serve your time out, there is no help for that, but as long as you behave yourselves and continue absolutely silent regarding your relationship to the wife of this gentleman, you shall have paid into a certain bank that he will name, a monthly sum that upon your dismissal from jail shall be paid you with whatever interest it may have accumulated.

You are ready to promise that, are you not ?" he inquired turning to Mr.Blake.
That gentleman bowed and named the sum, which was liberal enough, and the bank.
"But," continued the detective, ignoring the sudden flash of eye that passed between the father and son, "let me or any of us hear of a word having been uttered by you, which in the remotest way shall suggest that you have in the world such a connection as Mrs.Blake, and the money not only stops going into the bank, but old scores shall be raked up against you with a zeal which if it does not stop your mouth in one way, will in another, and that with a suddenness you will not altogether relish." The men with a dogged air from which the bravado had however fled, turned and looked from one to the other of us in a fearful, inquiring way that duly confessed to the force of the impression made by these words upon their slow but not unimaginative minds.
"Do you three promise to keep our secret if we keep yours ?" muttered the father with an uneasy glance at my pocket.
"We certainly do," was our solemn return.
"Very well; call in the girl and let me just look at her, then, before we go.

We won't say nothing," continued he, seeing Mr.Blake shrink, "only she is my daughter and if I cannot bid her good-bye--" "Let him see his child," cried Mr.Blake turning with a shudder to the window.

"I--I wish it," added he.
Straightway with hasty foot I left the room.