However, he got up at last, all shuddering and weak, with the remains of the phial grasped in his hand, and with a morbid curiosity returned again to examine the box. This time he set it open and took out the sheet of paper. He could scarcely distinguish the words at first, for the awe of looking at his father's writing, and receiving thus, as it were, a direct message from the dead; but when the sense slowly broke upon him the effect was like a stroke of magic. He stood staring at the paper, his eyes starting from his head, his face flushing and paling with wild vicissitudes of colour; then he dropped down heavily on the floor, thrusting aside unconsciously Mr. Scarsdale's chair, which stood in its usual place by the table. He could neither cry nor help himself; he fell heavily, like a man stunned by a sudden blow--voice, strength, consciousness went out of him; he lay prostrate, with his head upon the fleecy lambskin where his father's feet had been accustomed to rest, no longer a self-defending, self-torturing, conscious parricide, with a brand upon his soul worse than that of Cain; a figure blind and helpless, an insensible, inanimate mass of dull flesh and blood, conscious of nothing in the world, not even that he lived and was a man.
The paper fell fluttering after him and covered his face. It was of the kind and colour which Mr. Scarsdale always used--a blue flimsy leaf, and had been carefully cut to fit the box in which it was placed. What had tempted the recluse to record thus his suspicions and his precaution, no one in the world could now ever tell; save as the expression of a vindictive sentiment, and secret triumph to himself in his solitude for discovering and baffling a secret enemy, there was no meaning in it, and the chances are that nothing would have brought these words from the unhappy father's pen could he have known the overpowering transport of relief which at sight of them should overthrow all the strength and make useless the defences of the still more unhappy son. On the paper were written in large letters, in Mr. Scarsdale's distinctest handwriting, the following words--
"Tampered with by some person to me Unknown, and the contents of this chest left untouched by me since the 3rd May, on which day I have reason to believe this was done."