When the chief engineer of the Olive Branch at last put off from the ship for the shore in response to Captain Dove\'s second and still more peremptory message, he took the tiller of the boat himself, and steered straight for the water-gate of the castle. In one of his pockets he had a rusty key which presently served to turn its creaking lock.

He had left his coat in the boat and ordered the boat\'s crew to await his return. And he made his way with accustomed steps, almost noiselessly in his rubber-soled shoes, up the sloping underground passage which leads from the long-disused water-gate toward the gun-room which long ago was the armoury of the castle.

Once he halted to strike a match. Its feeble light showed him the rough rock walls and roof of the tunnel, the uneven slope underfoot worn almost smooth by nefarious traffic long since at an end.

He advanced again, cautiously, till he came to the brink of a broad, gaping chasm, which, but for a couple of carelessly carpentered fir-trunks stretching across it, would have closed that pathway effectually against him or anyone attempting to enter the castle by stealth, as he was doing.

He tested that makeshift bridge as well as he might before crossing it. Half-way over, a cold, damp breath from the depths beneath blew out another match he had struck as he started. A muted gurgle and squatter that came uncannily to his ears told of the subterranean tide crawling in to cleanse again the far floor of the pit below which had so often in the past served for a charnel-house. Creeping over the tree-trunks, he shrugged his shoulders as that thought passed through his mind, and drew a breath of relief as he stepped on to the solid rock on the other side.

From there, the way to the steps at the gun-room entrance was clear and the old iron gates above and below were both wide, as he discovered by sense of touch. He set an ear to the panel beyond, to find out whether the gun-room was occupied, and heard only a long-drawn groan. That seemed to come from somewhere behind him. He descended the steps again, listening intently.

Another safety-match sputtered and broke into a blue light in his tremulous fingers. He saw that the bolt on the outside of the cell door at the foot of the steps was shot and judged that there must be some one within. For a moment, he hesitated; and then he pulled the bolt free.

"Who\'s there?" he asked of the darkness that gave him back only another low groan for answer.

The heavy hinges of the door creaked as he thrust it open and entered. His last match showed him a huddled white heap in one corner, two hands tied behind it, a grey-haired and bleeding head. He turned back and pushed up into the gun-room without more ado. It was empty.

He looked dazedly about him in the bright lamplight, and his eyes fell on a couple of candlesticks. He picked one up and found a full box of matches beside it. From the decanter on the table before the fire he partly filled a glass, and disappeared down the steps again with his candle to show him the way, drawing the panel back into place behind him.

Within the cell door he set down the glass he was carrying and, pulling out a pocket-knife, cut through the cord which secured the wrists of the prone figure in the corner. Its hands fell limply apart and lay palms upward. He did not at once release its ankles, but, stooping over it, pulled it round on to its back—and sprang away from it in such frantic haste that the candle jumped from its holder and left him in darkness again.

He all but brained himself as he rushed for the door, but he got outside and, stunned as he was, set his shoulder to it. It closed with a clang and, as he shot the bolt home, he sank to his knees, breathing brokenly, his forehead on its rusty iron. He righted himself with an effort, but stayed where he was, sitting huddled together against the rock wall, his face damp with cold perspiration. He was blind in the blackness about him and could hear nothing but the trip-hammer beat of his own strained heart.

Its turbulence began to die down by degrees and in time he regained some command of his stupefied faculties.

"It couldn\'t possibly be," he kept on assuring himself. "I must have been mistaken. It couldn\'t possibly—"

He pulled his slack limbs up under him, and rose, slowly, forcing them to obey him.

"But I must make sure," he muttered, and still let himself linger outside the cell door, to listen for any sound from within.

A groan, fainter than the first he had heard, encouraged him.

"Pretty far through, whoever he is," said he to himself, and with another effort of will-power once more pulled back the bolt.

The fresh match he struck, before going further, showed him that the man inside had not moved, and he found his candle where it had fallen, in time to light it before his match burned out. With it in one hand he went forward on tiptoe, to study the other\'s features intently, his own expressing fear, absolute disbelief, doubt, a growing conviction in turn.

"It is M\'Kissock!" he cried finally, and at the words unconsciously uttered, the other\'s eyelids began to flicker in the candle-light until at length they opened and remained open at their widest. And for a long time they two stayed thus, regarding each other as if bereft of power of movement or speech.

Then Farish M\'Kissock\'s slack jaws took to twitching convulsively. A low moaning broke from his mouth. A film came over his dreadfully staring eyes. He would have fallen unconscious again had not the engineer snatched up the glass at one side and poured down his throat a few drops of the spirit it held. His teeth closed with a snap and he groaned again, heartrendingly; but, in a little, he had so far benefited by that hurtful remedy as to recover the use of his voice. His lips moved and his rescuer leaned forward to catch the hoarse, agonised whisper that came from them.

"You were always—a cruel devil, Lord St. Just," gasped Farish M\'Kissock, "even when you were alive. It should be my right—to torment you now, and not—you me!"

The engineer drew back a little. He knew then that he had not been mistaken.

"You\'re not dead yet, M\'Kissock," said he soothingly, in his voice of a gentleman, "although—I\'ll be damned if I can understand how that is!" And then, suddenly realising a little of all it must mean to him that his old enemy was still living, "If I had only known—" he murmured with exceeding bitterness. "Oh, my God! Think of all those awful years!"

Farish M\'Kissock attempted to laugh, with a very horrid effect. He raised a trembling hand to his head, and looked at its fingers, all smeared with red. His rolling eyes tried to pierce the obscurity of the vault in which he was lying. Remembrance of the more immediate past began to stir in his mind. He drew a long, deep, painful breath.

"I thought—I thought—" he mumbled brokenly, and his eyes closed. He was once more insensible.

The engineer of the Olive Branch looked round for the candlestick he had dropped, and, finding that, made his light safe. Then he kneeled down beside the other and raised his head and lifted him so that his shoulders should rest on the rock behind. Another teaspoonful of the stimulant in the glass flogged his patient\'s flagging heart into further effort, and Farish M\'Kissock opened his eyes again.

"Loose my feet," he begged brokenly, and the engineer did so: but he lay still where he was, too weak to move. For a time, the only sound to be heard was his hurtful, irregular breathing. Then he glanced curiously, for the first time, at his rescuer\'s threadbare blue uniform.

"You\'re just in time, Lord St. Just," said he, his voice clearer and his ideas beginning to gain some coherent shape. "Though that\'s not the name I should be calling you now, since you\'re still living in spite of me, and Earl of Jura by all the laws of the land.

"But—where have you come from so late-along? Where have you been since—They hold it against me here to this day that I murdered your lordship; and—there was your body found later on at the foot of the cliffs in front of your hut."

The other sat down by the doorway, with a limp shrug of the shoulders that spoke a weariness beyond words.

"I didn\'t fall very far, M\'Kissock," he answered presently. "And—I thought you must have slipped over too as we fought there—for I saw a body sunk among the rocks in the water below; it was a still day, you remember. But—where were you?"

"I took to my heels through the woods, thinking it would go ill with me when what I believed had happened to you came out; for it was known that I had gone to your hut to seek you, and why." His voice grew very hard, and he shot a glance of unquenchable hatred at his companion. "So I lay hid in the hills till nightfall, and then fled the countryside. I heard afterwards that they had found your body, although it was scarcely more than a rickle of bare bones by then, and of course they put the blame of it all on me without more ado."

The engineer of the Olive Branch who was also the Earl of Jura sighed drearily. The best years of his life had gone to pay the penalty fate had exacted, through that mistake, for a fault he had almost forgotten. And now, desire had failed him; his spirit was utterly broken.

"I was just such another fool as yourself, M\'Kissock!" said he in a hopeless tone. "I was afraid they would lay your death at my door, and—I bolted too; without a word to a living soul. I\'ve been afraid ever since, because—I\'ve been told that the police were always looking for me."

M\'Kissock\'s jaw dropped. He looked again at the other\'s torn uniform.

"Who was it told you that?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

"The Old Man on the Olive Branch. I\'ve been chief engineer on his ship for five or six years, and before that—I shipped as a stoker at first, M\'Kissock, at Yedo, in Japan. I was starving there. And I\'ve worked for him all that time like a slave—on the strength of a groundless lie!"

"Had he any idea who you were?" the other demanded.

"I thought he must know; but I can see now that he was simply making a fool of me for his own ends. If he had known, he surely wouldn\'t have sent for me to come ashore here."

"He certainly would not," agreed his companion with grim assurance, and they both fell silent again, each engrossed in his own overwhelming, embittered reflections.

"Dove knows nothing at all about you," said Farish M\'Kissock presently, and Lord Jura looked up as if astonished at the sound of his voice.

"But—how do you know that, M\'Kissock?" the latter inquired in a querulous tone, pulling nervously at his under-lip. "What are you doing here, in that queer rig-out? I don\'t understand. Where have you—&qu............