The shadow which had followed Captain Dove throughout his headlong flight from the hut on the cliffs had halted behind a bush at the edge of the wood while he lingered on the drawbridge to look back. As soon as he disappeared through the postern it flitted in the dusk across the gravel sweep in front of the castle, down into the dry moat and up again on the other side to a dark window: through which it gained easy ingress. And from that point, moving stealthily and with extreme precaution along the servants\' passageways, it finally reached the housekeeper\'s quarters: where it stood listening intently for a few seconds before stepping in on Mrs. M\'Kissock.

She was seated at her early supper, alone, and looked round in surprise, which quickly deepened into dire bewilderment and dread.

"Farish!" she whispered with pale lips, as he cast off the soiled and travel-worn white Arab cloak which had covered him, showing himself a big, bent, white-bearded, fierce-looking, haggard-faced fellow, barefooted, almost in rags. He was glancing about him with the expression of a wild beast in a cage while the old housekeeper gazed at him, breathing over-quickly, her hands at her heart.

"Ay, it\'s Farish, Janet," said he at length, in a very bitter voice, and threw himself wearily into a chair. "None other than your ne\'er-do-well brother, Farish, come home to die on your hands. I\'ve been hiding in the woods all day, waiting a chance to creep in. I\'m starving, too."

She turned, trembling sickly, to a full cupboard and set more food on the table in haste. He fell upon it like a famished wolf, and while he was devouring it they talked, in broken sentences.

"Where have you come from—in such a state?" the old woman asked, watching him with woe in her face.

"From hell," he mumbled hoarsely, his mouth full, "to square accounts with another devil who seems to have made the Castle of Loquhariot his home too. What\'s Dove, as he calls himself, doing here, Janet?"

"He came with the Lady Josceline Justice," Mrs. M\'Kissock made difficult answer.

"He came with the Lady Josceline Justice!" repeated her brother mechanically, and ceased eating for an instant to stare at her out of blank, disbelieving eyes. Then he went on with his ravenous feast and his questioning. "Who else is here?"

"Mr. Slyne," his sister told him meekly, "and Mr. Jobling, her ladyship\'s London lawyer. The Duchess of Dawn and Lord Ingoldsby came across the Pass to call on her ladyship this afternoon. And there\'s Mr. Herries, too, ill in bed, as he\'s been since the night of her ladyship\'s coming."

"I know the man Slyne," muttered Farish M\'Kissock. "But—what\'s Lady Josceline Justice like?"

He listened attentively to his sister\'s brief, fond description, and then pushed the plates from before him.

"Can you give me something to drink now?" he asked, in a strained, unsteady voice. She brought him a bottle of wine from the cupboard and he swallowed some, very sparingly. It brought a little colour back into his ashen face.

"I\'ll eat some more in a minute or two," he muttered, and sank back into his chair, and sighed. And there he sat, still and silent, while the big grandfather\'s clock in its corner ticked away an eternity of suspense.

"And so it\'s—her!" he whispered to himself, and looked up at his sister again as if he had been unaware of her company.

"Listen, Janet," said he then, in a stronger voice, "and I\'ll tell you something of what I owe Dove.

"When I had to flee this country, at the time of Lord St. Just\'s death, I took to the sea for a while, and, knocking about the world, I chanced across Dove and his ship—the old Fer de Lance it was then. And I signed on with him—it was in San Thomé—for reasons that don\'t matter now. But he and I soon fell foul of each other—for reasons that don\'t matter either—and what d\'ye think he did to get rid of me! He set me ashore, on the African coast, alone—to die in the desert there."

A dangerous light was beginning to burn in his sunken eyes. He had set his two twitching hands on the table, was leaning forward.

"But—I didn\'t die, after all, you see," he said. "I didn\'t die then, Janet. I\'m not dead yet.

"It would only weary you to hear all that happened to me before I came into my kingdom. For I was as good as a king there, Janet, and—

"No, I\'m not mad, though I might well be after all I\'ve suffered through—him. It was a kingdom I\'d made for myself before he came my way again. From Tripoli to the Susa, my word was all but law, and there was scarcely a tribe but paid me tribute. The Sultan of Morocco himself would send me presents when I passed by. I\'ve fought and beaten the French, time and again, in country they claim for their own. They knew the Emir El Farish, Janet, although you think that it\'s raving I am.

"But never mind that. What you\'ll understand better is that I had come to be a very rich man there. I had horses and camels by hundreds, and gold and jewels almost more than I had time to count, and an army of fine fighting men to keep them all safe. I had wealth as well as power, all but as much as I wanted of both, when Dove came slinking into my camp on the coast one dark night, like some dirty jackal.

"His ship was lying in the bight, and—I had business on board with him. I went off in a boat, with no more than two of my men, blind fool that I was!

"I might have known better," he mused very bitterly, "but—

"He struck me down from behind. He turned me and my men adrift, insensible, in an open boat.

"It blew out to sea. I lived, without food or water, for nearly a week before I was picked up by a passing steamer that took me to Spain, but the other two died.

"I was as good as a king in Africa, and—Look at me now! I\'ve lost all—all but these rags, and I\'m spent, as the Spaniards say. I can\'t go back to reclaim what was mine. And what will have happened among my people without me, I can scarcely bear to think. For I was fond of them, Janet, in my own way.

"But, after all, it\'s enough for me now that I\'ve found him again—and in time. I could scarcely believe that it was really him I saw by the hut."

He was speaking in a strange, far-away voice, almost contemplatively; and, while he spoke, he was fingering the hilt of the long sheath-knife at his frayed black belt.

"Would you do murder here again, Farish!" whispered his sister, her clasped hands still tight at her heart. She had heard him out in tense silence, without a word. "Was not once enough! Must I be the one to betray you now—lest you do murder here again!"

Her brother\'s gaunt features twisted slowly into a horrible grin, and relaxed again into an expression of some concern as he observed her evident stress of mind.

"It was no murder, but justice, that I did on Torquil St. Just," said he. "He would have killed me if he could. But I suppose they will always blame me for his death, Janet; and it would no doubt go hard with me, even after all these years, if any but you knew my whereabouts.

"But—I\'m safe with you, Janet. And I\'ll do no murder, I give you my word. I have other means—

"I\'m safe with you, Janet," he repeated, glancing about the quiet, lamp-lit room.

"None will enter without my leave," she hastened to reassure him. "You can stay safe here, Farish, till we can come at some plan to help each other, for I cannot bide in the castle for long either, now you\'ve come back.

"But—you must work no more harm in the house whose bread I have eaten so long. Whatever hurt Torquil St. Just did you, he has long gone to his account, and you have surely no ill will to her ladyship. She has suffered sorely too, poor thing! in her time, or I\'m much mistaken."

"When did she come to Loquhariot?" Farish demanded.

"Not much more than a fortnight ago—and just in time. For before her had come, from America, a far cousin, one Mr. Justin Carthew, to claim the rights that are hers, thinking, as I did indeed, that she must be dead."

"You can\'t mean yon whistling, limber fellow that walks with a limp? I saw him too at the hut," said the wreck in the chair at the table with a sudden, fierce, eager light in his lack-lustre eyes. "But—I took him for a ghost. How came he here? My men told me—"

His sister had nodded silently. She sat staring at him in abject suspense, hope and despair alternately flitting across her wrinkled face.

But he said nothing more for some time. That last unaccountable twist of fate had almost stupefied him.

A telephone bell rang behind his sister, and startled him out of his reverie.

"Mr. Slyne says her ladyship wishes rooms prepared for the duchess and Lord Ingoldsby," she told him as she turned back from the instrument. "And dinner\'s to be served in the banquet-hall. I must be off about my business now, Farish. Will you wait here till I come again—and promise to work no more harm?"

"I\'ll find a quieter corner to hide in," he answered indifferently. And, in response to her harassed glance, "You must just trust me to take care of myself and not trouble you more than need be," he told her. "I know this old vulture\'s-nest well enough not to be discovered in it. And—I\'ll do Dove no violence, Janet; you have my pledged word for that."

She lingered still, almost distracted, not knowing what to do for the best. Bu............