He insisted that I should stay, and, even more, he promised that as soon as I was out of hospital I should be his servant, saying that as the son of an old tenant, he would rather have me than anyone else.

You can well imagine, then, Miss Greendale, how willingly I would have given my life for him, and that when the chance came I gladly faced odds to save him.
"Before that I had come to learn who the man was.

It was a letter from my father that first gave me the clue; he mentioned that another gentleman had left the neighbourhood and gone abroad, just at the time that Major Mallett did.

He was a man who had once made me madly jealous by his attentions to Martha at a fete given to his tenants.
"The Major had the same thought, and he told me that he knew the man was a bad fellow, though he did not say why he thought so.

Then I heard that Martha had returned to die, and I learned that she had told her mother the name of her destroyer, who deserted her three months after he had taken her away.