need not tell you that I am no murderer."

"A murderer?--no," said Alice, still looking at him with the same fixed
gaze. "But you and this man were at deadly variance. He would have
rejoiced at any chance that would have laid you cold and bloody on the
earth, as he is now; nay, he would most eagerly have seized on any
fair-looking pretext that would have given him a chance to stretch you
there. The world will scarcely believe, when it knows all about your
relations with him, that his blood is not on your hand. Indeed," said
she, with a strange smile, "I see some of it there now!"

And, in very truth, so there was; a broad blood-stain that had dried on
Middleton's hand. He shuddered at it, but essayed vainly to rub it off.

"You see," said she. "It was foreordained that you should shed this man's
blood; foreordained that, by digging into that old pit of pestilence, you
should set the contagion loose again. You should have left it buried
forever. But now what do you mean to do?"

"To proclaim this catastrophe," replied Middleton. "It is the only honest
and manly way. What else can I do?"

"You can and ought to leave him on the wood-path, where he has fallen,"
said Alice, "and go yourself to take advantage of the state of things
which Providence has brought about. Enter the old house, the hereditary
house, where--now, at least--you alone have a right to tread. Now is the
hour. All is within your grasp. Let the wrong of three hundred years be
righted, and come back thus to your own, to these hereditary fields, this
quiet, long-descended home; to title, to honor."