"
His self-possession had returned to him.
"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will tell the boy that he can
go."
We heard him, a moment later, turn the key in the outer door; and
when he came back and had made up the fire, he told us the beginning
of the story.
The name of the man buried in Highgate Cemetery was Hepworth, after
all. Not Michael, but Alex, the elder brother.
From boyhood he had been violent, brutal, unscrupulous. Judging
from Ellenby's story, it was difficult to accept him as a product of
modern civilisation. Rather he would seem to have been a throwback
to some savage, buccaneering ancestor. To expect him to work, while
he could live in vicious idleness at somebody else's expense, was
found to be hopeless. His debts were paid for about the third or
fourth time, and he was shipped off to the Colonies. Unfortunately,
there were no means of keeping him there. So soon as the money
provided him had been squandered, he returned, demanding more by
menaces and threats. Meeting with unexpected firmness, he seems to
have regarded theft and forgery as the only alternative left to him.
To save him from punishment and the family name from disgrace, his
parents' savings were sacrificed. It was grief and shame that,
according to Ellenby, killed them both within a few months of one
another.
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