"Ay," he answered, "I knew. What of it?"

"Can you ask? You have drifted far away from us, David, yet you, too,
are a Strong and the last of our race. He was murdered, and as yet the
man who slew him goes unpunished. Can you ask me then what should be
the purpose of my life? It is to see him hang."

She had risen to her feet, a grim, threatening figure in the unshaded
lamplight. The yellow glare fell upon her hard, set face, her tightly
compressed lips and black eyebrows. Of a sudden David realised her
strange and wonderful likeness to the dead man. His own bloodless lips
parted, and the room rang with horrid laughter, surely the laughter of a
lunatic.

"Oh, it is a wonderful purpose that," he cried. "To see him hang--hang
by the neck. Bah! What concern of yours, Joan, is it, I wonder?"

"I am his daughter."

"And I his son. And, listen, my sister, here is news for you. It was
no living man at whose door his death lies, but at a woman's. A
woman's, I tell you. You understand? I swear it."

She looked at him doubtfully. Surely he was raving.

"A woman's, David?"

"Ay, a woman's. And there are others too--her victims. Look at me. I
myself am one. Her victim, body and soul corrupt. If one could only