Jim was silent for a moment. The desire for vengeance by this time had taken such a hold upon him, and had become such an integral part of his constitution, that he was staggered beyond measure by her words.
"Surely you don't mean to say, Alice," he stammered, "that you are willing to forgive the man who so cruelly killed our father?"
"I shall try to forgive him," the girl replied. "I say again, that I am sure it is what our father would have wished us to do."
"I am no such saint," Jim returned angrily. "I wish to see that man brought to justice, and, what's more, if no one else will, I mean to bring him. He took that noble life, and he must pay the penalty of his crime. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, was the old law. Why should we change it?"
Alice rose and crossed the room to her own chair with a little sigh. She knew her brother well enough to be sure that, having once made up his mind, he would carry out his determination.
On the morning following this conversation, Jim was standing after breakfast at the window of his sister's boudoir, looking out upon the lawn, across which the leaves were being driven by the autumn wind. His brow was puckered with thought. As a matter of fact, he was wondering at the moment how he should commence his search for Murbridge. London was such a great city, and for an amateur to attempt to find a man in it, who desired to remain hidden, was very much like setting himself the task of hunting for a needle in a bundle of hay. He neither knew where or how to begin. While he was turning the question over in his mind, his quick eye detected the solitary figure of a man walking across the park in the direction of the house. He watched it pass the clump of rhododendrons, and then lost it again in the dip beyond the lake. Presently it reappeared, and within a few moments it was within easy distance of the house. At first Jim had watched the figure with but small interest; later, however, his sister noticed that he gradually became excited. When the stranger had passed the corner of the house he turned excitedly to his sister.
"Good gracious, Alice!" he cried, "it surely cannot be."
"What cannot be?" asked Alice, leaving her chair, and approaching the window.
"That man coming up the drive," Jim replied. "It doesn't seem possible that it can be he, yet I've often boasted that I should know his figure anywhere. If it were not the most improbable thing in the world, I should be prepared to swear that it's Terence O'Riley."
"But, my dear Jim, what could Terence be doing here, so many thousand miles from our old home?"