47726    'My unhappy brother is starving on the moor.

47727    We cannot let him perish at our very gates.

47728    The light is a signal to him that food is ready for him, and his light out yonder is to show the spot to which to bring it.'

47729    'Then your brother is-'

47730    'The escaped convict, sir - Selden, the criminal.'

47731    'That's the truth, sir,' said Barrymore.

47732    'I said that it was not my secret, and that I could not tell it to you.

47733    But now you have heard it, and you will see that if there was a plot it was not against you.'

47734    This, then, was the explanation of the stealthy expeditions at night and the light at the window.

47735    Sir Henry and I both stared at the woman in amazement.

47736    Was it possible that this stolidly respectable person was of the same blood as one of the most notorious criminals in the country?

47737    'Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother.

47738    We humoured him too much when he was a lad, and gave him his own way in everything, until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it.

47739    Then, as he grew older, he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke my mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt.

47740    From crime to crime he sank lower and lower, until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold, but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I had nursed and played with, as an elder sister would.