There was something very dreadful about Farish M\'Kissock\'s appearance as he came shuffling forward from the corner under the gallery. His torn and travel-stained white robe gave him a ghostly aspect which was heightened by the cold and clammy pallor of his face, his sunken eyes, the matted, blood-stained tangle of grey hair that merged into a long, unkempt beard and moustache. He moved like an automaton, with all his limbs and joints loose. The stamp of death was on him.

The Duchess of Dawn shrank into the ingle behind her as he approached, and her noble nephew backed after her, one elbow uplifted, fists clenched, with the apparent idea of protecting her from that spectre-like apparition; at whom Herries also was gazing, aghast but motionless, while Mr. Jobling, with bulging eyes and open mouth, felt about him as if for some friendly hand to clutch at and, finding none, laid hold of Slyne by the coat—who struck his fingers away with a muttered oath. Slyne and Captain Dove and Justin Carthew were all regarding him with blank dismay. Sallie uttered a little, low, pitiful cry as she recognised in the worn-out wreck who had halted mutely a few paces away the man she had seen only a month or two before in the prime of life and the plenitude of his power, the Emir El Farish.

His burning eyes met and held Captain Dove\'s cowed, murderous, questing glance for a moment; and then he laughed, in a most grisly manner.

"I\'m dying now, Captain Dove," said he, in a strong, deep voice that contrasted strangely with his obvious bodily exhaustion, "a day or two sooner than need have been—but for you. You\'re hale and strong yet. You\'ll fight hard—when the hangman and his mates come quietly into your cell at daybreak to pinion you. And, when you\'re standing on the trap, with your head in a bag and the knot in a new rope rasping under one ear, you\'ll think of me that\'s waiting for you in the pit below the scaffold.

"But that\'s for by and by; and there\'s to-day to be done with first." He laughed again, in such a fashion that the listeners shuddered. "I told you there was nothing at all that would avail you against me," said he. "Maybe you\'ll believe me now!"

Captain Dove looked furtively round at the others\' faces, and spoke, with obvious difficulty. "I\'ve no idea what you\'re talking about—"

"I found M\'Kissock—where you left him," interrupted Lord Jura, as if to say that it was needless now to deny anything.

"You\'d better send him back there, then," Captain Dove retorted rancorously. "The man\'s mad—and dangerous. That\'s why I had him shut up. He thinks he has some grudge against you, too. Take care he doesn\'t—"

"I\'m not mad. I\'m not even dangerous enough to save the hangman his job with you," said Farish M\'Kissock quietly, and turned to Lord Jura again. "But you\'ll see to it, my lord, that the cruel wrongs this old Judas has wrought you and me—ay, and even the innocent girl beside you there—are avenged to the uttermost. I can trust you for that at least."

Lord Jura looked forlornly at Sallie. He could not now recall his promise to her if Captain Dove still chose to take advantage of that.

"Sal—My sister has begged me to let him go free, M\'Kissock," he said at length, almost apologetically, "and—I\'ve agreed."

Farish M\'Kissock\'s head had begun to shake as if with palsy. He tried to speak, but could not articulate. The veins about his clammy, yellow temples were swelling darkly out, like cords. Carthew limped across to the table and brought him over a glass of water. He swallowed some with difficulty, and, finding his voice again, "You fool!" he cried, with inexpressible bitterness. "Oh, you blind fool! Will you let him serve you as he served me with her to help him!"

Lord Jura\'s face flushed.

"I want to hear no more from you in that strain," he said haughtily, as if the old spirit of place and power were stirring within him again. "It is sufficient that my sister\'s wishes—"

"If Sallie were your sister, it would make no difference," the dying man declared with fierce impatience. "This is no time to humour whim of hers. In any case—she is no kin of yours, Lord Jura, as Captain Dove well knows. He could have told you—Keep him off! He\'ll make an end of me before my time if he can, to silence me. And you must hear, before I go,—" He staggered backward, coughing, and almost choked for want of breath. Captain Dove had made a wild lunge at him, but Justin Carthew had sprung forward in time to save him from the old man\'s frenzied attempt: and Herries and Lord Ingoldsby also stepped in between him and his would-be murderer.

"All right, then," panted Captain Dove. "Leave me alone, and I\'ll do him no harm. I quite forgot that he was off his head, his lies provoke me so."

Lord Jura had put Sallie behind him to shield her in the struggle that promised. He looked round at her then with dazed, doubtful eyes and read in hers pain and horror and disbelief equally dreadful. He drew a deep, sobbing breath and confronted Farish M\'Kissock again.

"What in God\'s name are you driving at!" he demanded, in a tone which told the stress of mind he was suffering. And Farish M\'Kissock regarded him very evilly for a little before replying. Slyne and Captain Dove and Carthew were waiting, as if on barbed tenter-hooks. The others, and Sallie also, seemed to be stricken speechless and still.

"I am here to seek my revenge, my lord, as you know," said Farish M\'Kissock slowly at length, and licked his bloodless lips. "There is still a small matter betwixt your lordship and me that remains to be settled—an old wrong done, which your lordship has almost forgotten, it seems. I neither forget nor forgive.

"I may not have time left to tell all I owe Captain Dove there—for that goes back through long years to what I owe you. But, before I am done with, I think I can settle with you as well as with him.

"Sallie is no sister of yours, as Captain Dove knows—though she herself has been beguiled as easily as your lordship. Your lordship\'s sister, the Lady Josceline Justice, died in my arms eight or nine weeks ago: and she was my wife. Sallie there, knowing nothing, saw her a few hours before—"

He blinked and hung his head for a moment, as if recalling all that had come to pass since he had laid the light, wasted body aside on the sand, and set a guard over it until—until he could spare time to see to a decent grave.

"She was my wife," he said again, looking up at the last of the haughty Juras with hate unquenchable in his glance. "And that\'s the revenge I have taken on you and yours, my lord, for the ill your lordship lightly wrought—the other, that should have been."

A woman\'s voice came wailingly from the musicians\' gallery and Mr. Jobling uttered a low moan of abject fear. His nerves had evidently failed him altogether. Hasty steps were descending the short stone stairway which led to the gallery, and then Janet M\'Kissock came tottering forth across the floor from the foot of it.

"Oh, Farish!" the old woman cried to her brother. "Have you no heart at all! Are there not enough lives ruined already that you would wreck her ladyship\'s here as well?" And she turned toward Sallie with a poor, pitiful gesture as of protection. "It cannot be as you say," she whimpered. "For how could I be mistaken, that knew her father far better than you—ay, and the countess her mother too; whose locket she was wearing at her neck the day she first came to Loquhariot. I\'ll swear to it, at any rate! I had it for a time in my own keeping, before the countess—went away.

"Ask her ladyship where she got the locket, your grace. And then my poor, distracted brother will maybe admit that he\'s been deceived about her."

The duchess\'s anxious, encouraging look seemed to beg an answer of Sallie. But the girl was gazing, with dumb dismay in her wide, wounded............