Neither I nor any other ever murdered him . Was he not alive within five years , and did he not , in token of our long friendship , bequeath me his gold-headed cane and a mourning-ring ? '' Again had Memory been turning over her volume , and fixed at length upon so confused a page that she surely must have scribbled it when she was tipsy . The purport was , however , that while Mr. Smith and Edward Spencer were heating their young blood with wine a quarrel had flashed up between them , and Mr. Smith , in deadly wrath , had flung a bottle at Spencer 's head . True , it missed its aim and merely smashed a looking-glass ; and the next morning , when the incident was imperfectly remembered , they had shaken hands with a hearty laugh . Yet , again , while Memory was reading , Conscience unveiled her face , struck a dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith and quelled his remonstrance with her iron frown . The pain was quite excruciating . Some of the pictures had been painted with so doubtful a touch , and in colors so faint and pale , that the subjects could barely be conjectured . A dull , semi-transparent mist had been thrown over the surface of the canvas , into which the figures seemed to vanish while the eye sought most earnestly to fix them . But in every scene , however dubiously portrayed , Mr. Smith was invariably haunted by his own lineaments at various ages as in a dusty mirror . After poring several minutes over one of these blurred and almost indistinguishable pictures , he began to see that the painter had intended to represent him , now in the decline of life , as stripping the clothes from the backs of three half-starved children . `` Really , this puzzles me ! '' quoth Mr. Smith , with the irony of conscious rectitude . `` Asking pardon of the painter , I pronounce him a fool as well as a scandalous knave . A man of my standing in the world to be robbing little children of their clothes ! Ridiculous ! '' But while he spoke Memory had searched her fatal volume and found a page which with her sad calm voice she poured into his ear . It was not altogether inapplicable to the misty scene . It told how Mr. Smith had been grievously tempted by many devilish sophistries , on the ground of a legal quibble , to commence a lawsuit against three orphan-children , joint-heirs to a considerable estate . Fortunately , before he was quite decided , his claims had turned out nearly as devoid of law as justice .
As Memory ceased to read Conscience again thrust aside her mantle , and would have struck her victim with the envenomed XXXXX only that he struggled and clasped his hands before his heart .
Smith Spencer dagger joint-heirs knave lineaments mourning-ring orphan-children remonstrance years