Geoffrey went slowly downstairs, reciting to himself exactly all he knew. One point was salient: Mr. Francis had certainly seen the broken sluice. And he entered the hall.

Mr. Francis had taken off his waterproof, and was sitting comfortably in a chair. He looked up with his cheery smile when Geoffrey came in.

"Ah! my dear boy," he said, "you were quite right not to come out. The weather was odious; I have never seen such rain. But one feels better, after all, for a breath of air."

"I preferred the house," said Geoffrey. "Was the water in the lake very high?"

"Yes, it was a good deal swollen. In fact, it has carried away a considerable portion of the sluice. It must be seen to."

"A dangerous moment," observed Geoffrey, picking up a magazine and turning over the pages.

"Yes, I wish I had seen it go. A fine sight it must have been, six feet of water in that narrow channel. But we were on the way to the farm,[Pg 303] I suppose, when it happened. I must talk—I must talk to Harry about it this evening. It will want mending at once."

At this moment Geoffrey heard Harry\'s foot on the stairs just outside the hall. Though he knew nothing of psychology, he believed this to be a psychological moment.

"Is he out still?" he asked, seeing out of the corner of his eye that he was even now entering the hall.

"I suppose so," said Mr. Francis. "He left me on the way up to the farm."

Harry had now entered the hall, and his step was noiseless on the thick carpet. Mr. Francis, with his chair facing the fire, could not see him, but another half-dozen paces would bring him close.

"You are wrong," said Geoffrey slowly, "for he seems to have come in. This is he, is it not? Or his ghost?"

Mr. Francis, contrary to the doctor\'s orders, made an exceedingly brisk movement, springing to his feet and facing about. He saw Harry; he cast one brief look at Geoffrey, to which fear and a devilish enmity contributed largely, and turned to his nephew again in perfect control of himself and without further hesitation. Geoffrey had scarce time to tell himself that there was an awkward choice he had to make.

"Ah! my dear boy," he cried, "so you are all right. I felt sure you would be. But for a moment, for one moment, I was anxious, when I[Pg 304] came back from the farm with the men and we found the sluice broken."

Geoffrey stared in sheer astonishment at the man\'s glibness.

"With the men?" he asked. "Surely not."

"Dear fellow," said Mr. Francis, with the most natural manner, "how pedantically exact you are! I must be exact, too, it seems. I was a little ahead of them, for I ran back from the farm, being just a little uneasy about the weight of water that I knew must be pressing on the sluice. I thought, indeed, that when Harry made his first attempt to pull it up, it was a little unsafe for any one to stand there."

Suddenly all his doubts and certainties surged up in Geoffrey\'s mind.

"Did you warn him?" he asked.

Geoffrey saw Harry\'s eyebrows knit themselves together in a frown of perplexity which he could not decipher. But Mr. Francis turned to him with the eagerness of a boy anxious to confess.

"I did not," he said, "and all the time that I was going to the farm the thing weighed on me. I ought to have—I ought to have given way to my old-maid feeling of insecurity. But I was afraid—yes, dear lad, I was afraid Harry would laugh at me. Ah, how I repented my silence when I came back and found the sluice gone—gone!" he repeated.

"Yes, it went," said Harry. "I went too."

Mr. Francis looked at him a moment with[Pg 305] eyes of horror diminishing to a pin point; then he gave a little low cry and sank down in his chair again.

"What do you say? what do you say?" he murmured. "You were there; you were——"

"Oh, the sluice broke as I was standing on it, having another pull at the wooden gate, as you suggested, and down I went," said Harry. "The flood took me right under the bridge, rather a difficult matter, and a quarter of a mile farther down. Then I got out."

Mr. Francis lifted up his hands in a weary, uncertain manner.

"Under the bridge—under the bridge!" he said hoarsely.

"It would not take him over," remarked Geoffrey.

Mr. Francis seemed not to hear this comment.

"What can I say?" he cried. "What can I say or do? And to think that it was my fault! I ought to have warned you; I ought to have been on the safe side. I did not with my reasonable mind think that there was any danger, but I was uneasy. Harry, do not blame me too much: I remember advising you one day last winter when you came in wet from shooting, to go and change, and indeed, my dear boy, you did not receive my advice very patiently. I thought of that; I thought I would not weary you with my meddling misgivings."

"I don\'t blame you in the least, Uncle Francis," said Harry. "You didn\'t think the sluice[Pg 306] looked sufficiently unsafe to make it better that you should warn me. I also did not realize that it was in a dangerous condition. There is no harm done."

"I can not forgive myself," said Mr. Francis.

Harry laughed.

"Ah! there I can not help you," he said. "For my own part I can only assure you that there is nothing to forgive. There, that\'s all right," he added rather gruffly, desiring to have no scene.

Geoffrey had listened to this with a look of pleased attention, as a man may regard a little scene in a play, which he knows well. Mr. Francis had been through his part with great dexterity: here another actor—himself—should appear.

"And now for your story, Mr. Francis," he said very cheerfully, "as Harry will not give us curdling details. Let me see: you went to the farm, and ran back again, and I saw you go to the sluice. You found it gone. Dear, dear, how terrible for you! So you came quietly back to the house and sat yourself down in front of the fire, where I found you ten minutes ago."

Mr. Francis looked up with a scared eye.

"I hoped and trusted no accident had happened to him," he said. "I came to the house to make sure that he was safe. Ah! I can not talk of it, I can not talk of it," he cried suddenly.

"But ten minutes ago you told me that you supposed that Harry was still out," persisted Geoffrey. "What a strange thing is the human[Pg 307] mind! Here, for instance, I do not follow your thoughts at all. You were uneasy for Harry\'s safety, for fear of the sluice giving way, and as soon as you saw for certain that it had given way, you felt no further anxiety. You sat here in front of the fire, though, as you told me, you supposed Harry was out still."

Mr. Francis rose from his chair in great agitation.

"What do you mean? What are you saying?" he cried in a high, tremulous voice. "Do you know what your words mean?"

"My words mean exactly what they appear to mean," said Geoffrey quietly, feeling that the signal had been given and the time was come. "Hear me: how curious a thing, I said, is the human mind! The sluice you thought looked a little unsafe, and you were uneasy for Harry\'s safety as you went to the farm, for he was making at your suggestion an attempt to raise the wooden gate. You come back, and find symptoms of the confirmation of your fears: the sluice is broken. Harry is not there. Then you walk quietly back to the house, and tell me you suppose that Harry is out still. I repeat that I do not follow your train of thought. It is curious.—Harry, does not this seem to you also to be curious?"

Harry looked from one to the other a moment, puzzled and bewildered. Geoffrey spoke so quietly and collectedly that it was impossible not to listen calmly to what he said, impossible also not to understand what he meant. On the[Pg 308] other hand, he was saying things that were absolutely incredible. From Geoffrey he looked to Mr. Francis, who was standing between them. The old man\'s mouth quivered, his agitation was momentarily increasing. Then suddenly he recollected the doctor\'s warning that all agitation was bad for him, and he was his uncle, his friend, and an old man.

"Stop, Geoffrey!" he cried; "don\'t speak.—Uncle Francis, don\'t listen to him: he doesn\'t mean what you think he means. There is some ghastly misunderstanding.—Geoff, you damned idiot!"

Mr. Francis\'s face grew paler and more mottled, his breathing was growing short and laboured, and Harry was in an agony of terror that another of those awful seizures would come upon him. But in a moment he spoke, slowly, and with little pauses for breath.

"Harry," he said, "either your friend—apologizes unreservedly for—what he has said—or one of us—leaves the house—now, this evening. It will be for you—to decide—which of us leaves it."

At these words another terror seized Harry—the terror of the precipice at the edge of which all three of them stood. Whatever happened now, it seemed to him, a catastrophe must be: one friend or the other (and as he thought of the two, his mind veered backward and forward like a shifting weathercock) must go. But the primary necessity was, by any means in his power, to stop further words just now, for he feared each moment[Pg 309] that Mr. Francis would be seized as he stood.

"Uncle Francis, come away," he said, taking his arm, "you are agitated; so is Geoffrey; so am I. It is no use talking about a thing in heat. Wait, just wait.—Geoffrey, if you say another word I\'ll knock your silly head off!"

But Mr. Francis regarded his nephew no more than he regarded the fly that buzzed in the pane.

"What do you mean?" he said, coming closer to Geoffrey and shaking off Harry\'s hand; "what do you mean by what you have just said? Apologize for it instantly; do you hear? Indeed, it seems to me that I am very good-natured to be willing to accept an apology."

Harry put in a word he knew to be hopeless.

"Go on, Geoff," he said, impatiently, anxious for the moment only about his uncle. "Uncle Francis has understood what you said in some different way from what you meant. I don\'t know what it\'s all about, but let\'s have no more nonsense."

Geoffrey turned on that eager face but an absent and staring eye, hardly hearing his words, for they called up nothing whatever in his mind which answered to them—only collecting himself to speak fully and without excitement. He hardly gave a thought to how Harry might take it, so large and immediate was the need of speaking, so tremendous the part in this horrible nightmare inevitably his.

"I do not apologize," he said, "not only because[Pg 310] I do not wish to, but because I am simply unable. I indorse every word I have said. I have also more to say. Will you hear it, Harry? I should prefer to tell you alone, but I suppose that is impossible."

"Quite impossible, I assure you, you young viper!" said Mr. Francis, in a voice so cool and self-contained that Harry looked at him in utter surprise. The bursting agitation of a few minutes ago had passed; his voice, horrid and cold, was the faithful index of his face. And at his words Harry suddenly saw the futility of trying to interfere. The thing was gone beyond his reach; it was as impossible now to stop what was coming as it would have been to stop that hustling flood from the lake by a word to it. He waited, frozen almost to numbness with dread and nauseous misgiving for what should follow, till Geoffrey, in response to Mr. Francis\'s assurance, spoke.

"Your uncle," he said, "has for months past been plotting and scheming against you, your happiness, your life. He tried in the first place, by every means in his power, to prevent your marriage with Miss Aylwin. On the Sunday last June when she was down here they walked in the wood together, and saw——"

"I know all about that," said Harry.

"I doubt it. Do you know, for instance, that Mr. Francis tried to persuade Miss Aylwin to overlook the fact that she had seen you walking with a dairymaid? Do you know that he never suggested to her that the supposed \'you\' might[Pg 311] be Jim, that he told her that all \'your previous little foolishness\'—the exact phrase—had been quite innocent? I think you did not know that."

The whole scene still seemed utterly unreal to Harry; he could not believe that it was going on. He turned to his uncle.

"Well?" he said.

"Ah, I am on my trial then!" said Mr. Francis, very evilly. "Harry, my dear boy, it is only because this fellow has been your friend that I stop and listen to these monstrous insinuations. I am asked, I believe, what I have to say to this. Well, what has been said is literally true. I mistook the groom for you. So did Miss Aylwin. We both made............