The wind that rose during the night brought with it a change in the weather. When the day broke and a round red sun rose from among the mountains, it showed the whole world white—the land deep under snow and the sea all foam.

Slyne\'s first sensation when he woke and saw the storm, from behind the double windows of his comfortable rooms in the Warder\'s Tower, was one of relief, since it would surely serve to stave off inconvenient visitors. He had been afraid that the news the beacon had blazoned the night before would travel altogether too fast and too far to suit his plans; it would have been awkward in the extreme to be inundated with curious callers in a position practically carried by assault, only tenable by stealth and while no one in active authority should challenge it.

The coming of Herries, the factor, had opened his eyes to that. For the old fellow, ill as he was, had shown a most annoying inclination to cross-question Slyne about various dry legal details; and Slyne had only been able to put him off temporarily by promising that her ladyship\'s own man of law would go into all such matters with him in the morning.

Now, fortunately for Slyne and his friends, the factor need not be further considered for some little time to come, if indeed at all. The fever in him had refused to yield to any of Mrs. M\'Kissock\'s simple medicaments, and he was delirious. He seemed very likely, indeed, to die unless he were very lucky. Slyne did not fail to congratulate himself on that score also, as he sat up in bed to reach for a cigarette after his late breakfast and contemplate the cuffs of his expensive pink silk pajamas.

The rest of the company in the castle he thought he could find means to control, for the present, at any rate, although he did not under-estimate the chances of trouble with his two disaffected associates, who had already displayed such a lamentable tendency toward open mutiny. But, on the whole, he felt satisfied that, if he could only keep matters running smoothly during the days that must still elapse before the Court of Chancery should resume its usual routine and finally settle the Jura succession on Sallie, he would by then have managed to make his own footing there absolutely secure.

He snuggled back between the blankets again, with an inexpressible sensation of comfort, and, watching the blue spirals of smoke curl upwards from under his moustache, forgot all the anxious uncertainties and the ever more painful pinch of the present in contemplative anticipations of that fair future which he had so carefully planned for himself. Not even the fact that he had almost exhausted his cash resources could worry him when he thought of the wealth that was to be his as soon as he should be safely married to Sallie; and until then he could command unlimited local credit, on her behalf.

She was Lady Josceline Justice already. She would be Countess of Jura in her own right as soon as the Court of Chancery should admit her identity. She would have ten millions of dollars in ready money for him to spend and a quarter of a million for annual income. He had been a poor man all his life, but now—he looked luxuriously out at the snow and the storm.

"Mr. Jasper Slyne and the Countess of Jura," he said aloud, and smiled and curled his moustache.

He rose by and by and betook himself to his dressing-room, whistling a cheery tune. "And although I don\'t want to rush things," said he to himself as he stepped briskly into his bath, "if either Dove or that fat suicide makes any more fuss, I\'ll have to show \'em my teeth. They must both keep to the bargains we struck. And I think I\'ve made things pretty safe for myself by now."

When he at length strolled downstairs, infinitely refreshed after his long rest, he found Mr. Jobling and Captain Dove in close conclave in the library. And he did not like their looks in the least or their sudden silence at sight of him. He felt certain that they had been conspiring against him, and did not delay in commencing a counter-attack.

"\'Morning, Dove. \'Morning, Jobling," said he casually, as he stopped to select a cigar from the box on the table. "Change of weather, eh! You\'ll have a cold journey back to London, Jobling."

Mr. Jobling looked very coldly across at him. "I do not propose to return to London at present, Mr. Slyne," he replied. "Mr. Spettigrew will look after everything there."

"You\'re no more use to me here," said Slyne bluntly, "and you may be of some service in London."

"You are no longer a client of mine, Mr. Slyne," the lawyer retorted, no doubt emboldened by the promise of Captain Dove\'s unswerving support. "I can no longer act for you with any feeling of confidence—since I have found out how unfairly you have attempted to treat Captain Dove."

Slyne understood that open war was declared. "I won\'t be a client of yours for long, if you\'re going to be troublesome," he affirmed. "I think you\'ve got a little out of your depth again, my friend. I don\'t think you\'ll find it will pay you to take that tone."

Mr. Jobling began to splutter, and Captain Dove evidently felt impelled to come to his aid.

"You take too much on yourself, Slyne," said he, eyeing that gentleman with extreme disfavour. "You seem to think you\'re the whole show here, though you\'re nothing but a hanger-on, as I\'ve told you before. Let\'s have a good deal less of it, or—We can get on just as well, or even better—without you, you know."

Slyne turned a contemptuous stare on him. "So that\'s the idea now, is it!" he remarked, without any sign of heat. "You two think it\'s a case of dog eat dog now, do you! And—after you\'ve got rid of me, who picked you both up out of the gutter, you\'ll be at each other\'s throats. You\'re a great pair!"

His nonchalance incensed the old man, as he had intended it should.

"I want none of your damned lip," declared Captain Dove, glaring at him, "you precious upstart! You\'re nothing but a beggar on horseback yourself, for all your grand airs. Me and this other gentleman are both sick-tired of them. You\'re one too many—"

"I\'m one too many for you two, at any rate; and you may both stake your last cent on that," Slyne told him with a composure admirable under the circumstances. "You surely don\'t imagine, do you, that I\'m here on any such unsafe footing as you are! I thought you knew me well enough, Dove, to be sure that I\'d leave you no opportunity to go back on your bargain with me."

"To hell with you and your bargains!" cried Captain Dove: and then, restraining his rage, lowered his voice again. "The mistake you\'ve always made with me, Slyne, has been to take me for an old fool—as you\'ve very often called me to my face. You think I\'m in my dotage. But—I\'m not too old to show you a trick or two yet, if you and I come to grips. And, as for being such a fool as you seem to think me—you wait and see! I\'ve a card or two up my sleeve, Mr. Slyne, that\'ll maybe euchre your game for you, if you try to bluff too high!"

Slyne sat back and studied the old man\'s face. Captain Dove had made that same mysterious threat on board the Olive Branch in Genoa, before they had started out on their present adventure. It had disconcerted Slyne then. It disconcerted him still more now.

"Don\'t you think that you\'re a little inclined to overrate your importance and—er—capacity, Mr. Slyne?" put in Mr. Jobling acidly during the pause, involuntary on Slyne\'s part. "All your ideas are no doubt based on the documents we mutually signed in Monte Carlo; and you are probably not aware, as I am—now that I have a clearer insight into your motives—that they amount to neither more nor less than a conspiracy to defraud. You would be well advised, believe me, to put them all in the fire."

Slyne turned on him in an instant. "Now, see here, my friend! I want you to understand, once and for all, that I\'ve got you safe where I want you, and that, if I hear much more from you, you\'ll find yourself in a very unpleasant fix. You wouldn\'t look well at all in a striped suit—or I believe it\'s the broad-arrow pattern they supply in the prisons here. And that\'s what you\'ll come to, believe me, unless you walk the line I\'ve laid down for you. You can\'t embezzle trust funds, you know, and pay the interest with promises to be met as soon as you lay your hands on some of the plunder here, without running a very dangerous risk indeed. Why, even the car you sold me in Genoa was another man\'s property—and I hold your receipt for the price I paid you for it.

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