"I don't know you--I don't know you," she went on repeating. "Go away.

You have no right here."

"Then if you don't know me, maybe it'll be as well if I just say who you are to this young lady here," he said, with unmoved demeanour. "It may interest her to know, and you'll maybe place me when you hear all I know."

"It is nothing but a pack of lies--a lot of wretched lies. It is all untrue; everything is untrue," Mrs. d.i.c.kson exclaimed.

"Even before it is said," Slaughter remarked dryly. "Miss," he added, with a return of the angry vigour to his voice, "I told you my story once, the story of what made me a lonely man, the story of a lie a woman told to the woman I loved and who loved me. That woman--the woman I loved--was your mother. The other is there."

His tone had grown harder with every word, his eyes brighter, and his face more pale and set. As he spoke the last words there was an energy in voice and manner which seemed to make them almost a blow, and a blow before which the blind woman shrank.

"It's a lie!" she muttered. "It's a lie!"

"It _was_ a lie," he thundered. "It _was_ a lie that ruined one life and nearly blasted another, and now--now I've found you, after years of longing and waiting, found you as the mother of a scoundrel who sought to ruin the daughter of the woman you wronged."

"It's a lie!" she repeated. "My boy is brave; he would wrong no one."

"Where is he now?" Slaughter went on, in a voice that was loud and angry. "Where was he last night?"

"He is out at the fire," she said. "He is a brave boy and a good boy.

Blame me as you like, but you shall not blame him."

Ailleen, watching the two, fascinated by the development which was as inexplicable to her as it was unexpected, felt a touch of pity as she saw the expression of pride come over the blind woman's face--pride for the absent w.i.l.l.y!

"The close companion of Barber," Slaughter said; and Mrs. d.i.c.kson, clasping her hands together, sank into her chair again.

"No," she said, "no. He promised me he would not touch the boy. He promised he would not lead him astray."

"Then Barber has been here?" Slaughter cried.

The blind woman nodded.

"When?" Slaughter demanded.

"More than a month ago," she said in a subdued voice, as she shuddered.

"Ask Ailleen. She will tell you when. It was the day the rail broke."

"Why, that was Tony--Tony Taylor," Ailleen exclaimed, glad of any chance of interposing between the two.

Slaughter looked at her wonderingly, and as he looked there came a curious expression into his eyes.

"I must have been blind, I take it," he said, more as though he were speaking to himself. "I must have been blind--up to now."

"And w.i.l.l.y was with Tony last night?" Ailleen asked.

Slaughter started as he heard her voice.

"With Tony? No; he was with Barber, the most evil scoundrel, the--the--well, that woman's husband;" and he broke off as he swung round again towards Mrs. d.i.c.kson. "The man she married and left for another fool, who----"

"Don't!" the blind woman exclaimed. "Don't speak of him. Blame me--blame even w.i.l.l.y, but not him. _I loved him._"

Slaughter laughed in his mirthless, satirical manner again.

"Till yet another came," he said. "Till you met d.i.c.kson, and----"

"He _was_ d.i.c.kson," she interrupted. "It was the name he took. It was----"

"And you profane his memory by saying that he was the father of that cowardly slab?" Slaughter broke in angrily.

"He was the father of my boy. It was why I named him w.i.l.l.y. It is why he is all my world, ever since his father was taken from me."

"Miss," Slaughter exclaimed, turning to Ailleen again, "it makes me mad to hear her. She lied of me as she now lies of him, who was my dearest friend in the old days, the man she led to ruin with the witchery of her face. It makes me mad, I say," he went on, his voice rising under the growing fury of his anger. "She wronged me bad enough, but----"

With a sudden access of the frenzy which had seized him when he met Barber at the Three-mile, he swung round upon the blind woman as she sat trembling in her chair, with his fists clenched and the evil light of mania in his eyes. Ailleen, seeing the look and the gesture, sprang at him and seized his arm.

"Stop!" she cried. "Would you strike a helpless woman like that?"

He looked at her with his blazing eyes.

"A woman?" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "She's a fiend--a lying fiend. I have waited to kill her. Now the time has come. Now I can----"

The girl was in front of him, holding both his arms, and looking into his eyes with a fearless glance.

"You shall not," she said, as she struggled to push him back. "You shall not harm her. You are mistaken."

"Let me go. She nigh broke your mother's heart," he answered. "I've waited years. She's not fit to live. She even betrayed McMillan."

"No, no," the blind woman cried; "I did not--I did not! I gave up everything for him. I loved him."

Unnoticed in the excitement they were labouring under, the air had grown thicker with the smoke coming from the line of fires which almost surrounded them to windward. Unnoticed, also, was the figure of a horseman riding furiously up from the opposite direction. He sprang off his horse as he caught sight of them through the rapidly deepening haze of smoke, and, leaping from the ground, he clutched the verandah rail and pulled himself up.

"Quick for the horses! The fire is on you!" he shouted.

The blind woman started to her feet with a piercing shriek.

"His voice!" she cried. "It is him come back from the dead to save me.

w.i.l.l.y, w.i.l.l.y, my love, oh, come to me!"

She turned to where he was, with outstretched arms, feeling in the air, helpless in her blindness to do more. Slaughter, with his arms dropped to his sides, stared vacantly at them. Only Ailleen understood.

"Thank G.o.d you've come, Tony!" she exclaimed.

"Where are your horses?" he shouted. "The fire has reached the gra.s.s.

Slaughter, quick; it's life or death."

He sprang over the rail as he spoke, and pushed against Slaughter as he dashed over to Ailleen and seized her by the arm. The impact brought Slaughter out of his stupor.

"The horses are gone," he cried. Then, as his awakened sense showed him the peril they were in, he rushed along the verandah, shouting, "Fire the gra.s.s. It's our only chance."

"Go to the back of the house," Tony exclaimed to Ailleen, as he sped after him.