"When we reached Canada, he was still weak and ill. I brought him here under an assumed name, and he remains shut up in his rooms all day, and only ventures out at night to breathe the fresh air. His mind has never recovered its tone since that brain fever. He has become a monomaniac on one subject, the dread of being discovered, and hanged for murder. Nothing will tempt him from his solitude—nothing can induce him to venture out, except at midnight, when all are asleep. He is the ghost who frightened Margery and Agnes Darling; he is the man you saw with Kate last in the grounds. He clings to her as he clings to no one else. The only comfort left him in this lower world are these nightly walks with her. She is the bravest, the best, the noblest of girls; she leaves her warm room, her bed, for those cold midnight walks with that unhappy and suffering man."
Once again a pause. Reginald Stanford looked at Captain Danton's pale, agitated face.
"You have told me a terrible story," he said. "I can hardly blame this man for what he has done; but what claim has he on you that you should feel for him and screen him as you do? What claim has he on my future wife that she should take these nightly walks with him unknown to me?"
"The strongest claim that man can have," was the answer; "he is my son—he is Kate's only brother!"
"My God! Captain Danton, what are you saying?"
"The truth," Captain Danton answered, in a broken voice. "Heaven help me—Heaven pity him! The wretched man whose story you have heard—who dwells a captive under this roof—is my only son, Henry Danton."
He covered his face with his hands. Reginald Stanford sat confounded.
"I never dreamed of this," he said aghast. "I thought your son was dead!"
"They all think so," said the Captain, without looking up; "but you know the truth. Some day, before long, you shall visit him, when I have prepared him for your coming. You understand all you heard and saw now?"
"My dear sir!" exclaimed Stanford, grasping the elder man's hand; "forgive me! No matter what I saw, I must have been mad to doubt Kate. Your secret is as safe with me as with yourself. I shall leave you now; I must see Kate."