Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1902-11-01 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

CHAPTER IV.  THE OIL KING'S TERRIBLE SECRET.  It was between eleven and midnight when Mr Lemuel Valentine Bramshott, the celebrated millionaire oil-king, and partner in the firm of Noble and Noble, sat in the library of his house, Oakwood, near Barford-on-Lyne. The luxurious furnishings and wealth of sombrely, handoome ornaments might have inspired a poverty-stricken strangar with awe: but Lemuel V. Bramshott was too much acoustomed to these surroundings to be affected by them. The ordinary rich man would have bcsen inspired by the brilliance of the scene. But the oil king was not an ordinary rich man, and so it came about that after the departure of the young man whom for yeats he had loved and helped forward as a son, he began to pace the handsome room with a curiously restless step, with the odd fear showing plainer in his eyes, and with his countenance darkening moment by moment.  It was time for him to go to his bedroom, but he had no intention of going there yet. Where would be the use of going? He would not sleep. Sleep, a.s he well knew, would not come to him to-night. Ho had been restless all day, but the bustle of arrival in London, of the long train-journey North, and later on the society of Brian Torr, had hitherto kept the uneasiness down. Now that he was alone, however, the agitation which had for so many hours been stiller:: made itself felt within him with ever-increasing violence. Every year on this partioular date he was the victim of Etrange ohills of the soul, strange fears. stranga horrors: but to-night—now. in this hour—he suffered as he had never suffered before.  Why wall it that with every year his torture of soul grew worse, instead of growing better? Would it continue to grow worse until it should drive him to madness? Why could not he—a man of strong character, of steel-like nerves, and of iron will —thrust it away from him, and crush it down? He went to the two doors of the room in turn, and locked them. " He wantec'...to be sure of privacy—to flight alone the spectre which had risen up to confront him. The spectre. was the ghost of the dead and buried past, and it arose beforo him on this same day of every year. For this day *as the anniversary of the day en which he had laid, by a great crime, the foundation of his millions.  Summer had given place to autumn, and the nights were °hilly, and either for this came or because of the dem:4y ohill in his own soul he felt the need of drawing near to the small fire which he had ordered to be lighted. He oowered by the splendid hearth, his great frame bent and thaking. Outside, the night wind howled, shrieking round the mansion.  "It was just the same sort of weather that night,- he muttered, after lifting his massive heat to listen—" just the same tt.l.Jrt of weather that night. And it's twenty-five years ago. God, who would believe it? Twenty-five years ago! And it seems like yesterday!" Lower and lower he crouched by the hearth.  "Twenty-five years ago Elinoe :Matthew Shreeve was killed!" he whispered to the fire burriin,g in the great braes basket. "Twenty-five years to-day 81100 Matthew Shreeve was killed—was murdered!"  Suddenly he started up, and stumbled wildly away from the firep!ace. "It's all in the fire!" he cried aloud to the empty air. "There are pictures of it in the fire—from the first &cone in the train to the last, when I leapt out myself in the tunnel! God help me! The fire is accursed, as I am!" .  He stood panting, the sweat breaking from every pore of his body, and standing out in beiads on his forehead. After a