Ah, what sting lay in that thought!--what fresh sting lay there! Ralph called up again the expression on the face of Simeon Stagg as he asked him in the inn that night (how long ago it seemed!) to give the name of the man who had murdered Wilson.

"It's your duty in the sight of Heaven," he had said; "would you tarnish the child's name with the guilt laid on the father's ?" Then there had come into Sim's eyes something that gave a meaning to his earlier words, "Ralph, you don't know what you ask." Ah, did he not know now but too well?
Ralph walked across the room with a sense as of a great burden of guilt weighing him down.

The grave was not deep--oh, would it were, would it were! Would that the grave were the end of all! But no, it was as the old book said: when one dies, those who survive ask what he has left behind; the angel who bends above him asks what he has sent before.
And the father who had borne him in his arms--whom he had borne--what had he sent before?
Ralph tramped heavily to and fro.

His dog slept on the mat outside his door, and, unused to such continued sounds within, began to scrape and growl.
After all, there was no certain evidence yet.

To-morrow morning he would go up the fell and see Sim alone.