On the 19th of October the sky overhead was clear as sapphire, but all round the circle of the horizon the mists of autumn blurred the landscape. The hills stood no more in their places. Gone were the Kips, with their waving lines. Of the Cruives, with the heather thick and purple upon them, not a trace. Gone the graceful swirl of the Cooran Hill, which curls over like a wave just feathering to break.

To Irma it had been a heavy and a sorrowful day. She had actually wept, and even gone on her knees to her brother to beg him tell her what strange thing had come between them. He would only answer, “You have chosen your path without consulting me. Now I choose mine.”

She charged him with listening to one who had always been an enemy of all who had been good to him ever since he was a little child—of setting himself against those on whose bounty they had lived.

He replied, “If I have lived on their bounty, they know very well that they will not lose by it.”

She mentioned Lalor Maitland’s name, and told him the history of the early attacks on the house of Marnhoul. Louis answered, “He has explained all that. It was done to save me from these people who were already besetting me, in order to rob me.”

When she mentioned all that I had done for him, he put on an air of frigid detachment.

“You are right, no doubt, to stand up for your husband,” he said; “but, then, I have not the same reasons. I can judge for myself.”

Then she went on to show that there was no motive for the Lyons of Heathknowes showing them any interested kindness. As for me, she had only brought me herself and her love—no money, nor would she ever have any money—I had married her for herself.

“So would Lalor Maitland,” he retorted, “and he is a gentleman.”

After this Irma discussed no more. She felt it to be useless. Naturally, also, she was hurt to the heart that Louis, once her own little Louis, should compare her husband to Lalor Maitland. Well, for that I do not blame her.

All day long Louis stayed in the Wood Parlour with his books. I was busy with an important article on the “Moors in Spain,” suggested by my recent researches into the history of the irrigation of fields and gardens in the south of Europe.

Louis came down to dinner at twelve, or a few minutes after. He seemed somewhat more cheerful than was usual with him, and actually spoke a little to me, asking me lend him my grandfather’s shotgun, to put it in order for him, and that powder and ball might be placed in his chamber. He had seen game-birds feeding quite close, and thought that by opening the window he might manage to shoot some of them.

I did as he asked me before going back to my work. Irma smiled at me, being well pleased. For it seemed to her that Louis’s ill-temper was wearing away. Now my grandmother and Aunt Jen were inveterate tea-lovers, which was then not so common a drink in the country as it is now. Irma sometimes took a cup with them for company, and, because it also refreshed me in my labours, I also joined them. But with me it was done chiefly for the sake of the pleasant talk, being mostly my grandmother’s reminiscences, and sometimes for a sight of my mother, who would run across of a sunny afternoon for a look at baby.

That day we sat and talked rather longer than usual. A certain strain seemed to have departed from the house. I think all of us believed that the humour of Louis, execrable as it had been, was the effect of the insinuations of a wicked man, and that after a time he would be restored to us again the simple, pleasant-faced boy he had been in former years.

He did not come down to tea, but then he seldom did so. Indeed, none of the men-folk except myself had taken to the habit, and I (as I say) chiefly for the sake of the talk, which sharpened my wits and refreshed my working vocabulary. But as I passed back to my writing-den I could hear my brother-in-law moving restlessly about his room, and talking to himself, which was a recently-acquired habit of his. However, I took this as a good sign. Anything in the way of occupation was better than his former chill indifference to all that went forward about Heathknowes.

It was, as it chanced, a busy day at the pirn-mill. The labours of the farm being fairly over for the year, the mill had been shut down for hasty repairs, which Alec McQuhirr had come down from Ironmacannie to superintend. He was, so they said, the best mill-wright in the half-dozen counties of the south and west. He had, however, the one fault common to all his tribe, that of dilatoriness. So my grandfather, who had his “pirn” contracts to be shipped for England on certain days, used to call his sons about him, and devote himself and all of them to the service of repairing. Boyd Connoway, also, usually gave us the benefit of his universal genius for advice, and, when he chose, for handiness also.

After tea some provisions had been carried to the mill by my mother on her way home. “One of the boys”—meaning my uncles—was to bring back the basket.

That night, also, supper was somewhat later than usual. Up in the mill men were still crawling about along the machinery with carefully protected lanterns. Buckets of water stood handy. For a pirn-mill is no place in which to play with fire. The sound of male voices and the thud of wooden mallets did not cease till long after dark. Supper was, therefore, later than usual, and the moon had risen before the sound of their footsteps was heard coming down among the tree-roots in the clearing which they themselves had made. The kitchen, which was also the living-room of Heathknowes, glowed bright, and the supper-table was a-laying. Aunt Jen bustled about. I had laid aside my writing, satisfied with a goodly tale of sheets to my credit. My grandmother was in the milk-house, but every now and then made darts out to the fire on which the precious “het supper” was cooking—roast fowl, bacon, and potatoes—traditional on occasions when the men had been “working late at the mill and had brought home company.”

It was a bright and cheerful sight. The high dresser, the kitchen pride of Galloway, was in a state of absolute perfection. Aunt Jen despised men, but she had a way of reproving their congenital untidiness by the shine of her plates and the mirror-like polish of her candlesticks. She had spent a couple of hours over the dresser that afternoon, answering all the taunts of her mother as to her occupation, “It’s true, mither, they will never ken the difference; but, then, I will!”

“Go up, Irma, and tell your brother that we are waiting,” said my grandmother. But as Irma was busy with Duncan the Second, I offered myself instead. I remember still the long corridor, and I wondered at the moment why no ray of light penetrated through the keyhole of Sir Louis’s door. He must be sitting in the dark, and I smiled to myself as I thought how I had been wasting a couple of my grandmother’s best candles for an hour. The explanation was that Louis, in fear of being spied upon, had carefully plugged up the keyhole and every crack of the door. But this I only knew later.

I stood a moment in the passage, keeping very still. I could hear his voice. He seemed in some way indignant. But the sound was dulled by the thickness of the walls and the care with which the chinks of the door had been “made up.” Then I also heard—what sent the blood chill to my heart—another voice, shorter, harsher, older. For a moment I was struck dumb, and then—I laughed at myself. Of course the lad was simply stage-struck. For some time he had been reading and declaiming Hamlet, Julius CÆsar, and anything he could lay his hands upon, as well as scraps of the Greek tragedies he had learnt at school.

But as I leaned nearer, there pierced sharp as a pang to my heart the certainty that the other voice which I heard was not that of any of the characters of Julius CÆsar. A trembling horror of what I had once seen in that very room, and a memory of the great hearty Richard Poole entering there in all his amplitude of vivid life, quickly arrested me.

I rapped and called vehemently, trying the latch and feeling that the door resisted. I could hear a trampling beneath me. Men were on the way to my assistance. At the door I sprang. The bolts were as old as the door, and the nails of the lintel fastening only knocked in after its former rough handling.

I got one waft of light as the door opened, half from the candle on the table, half from the moonlight falling dim without. I saw something that crouched—manlike indeed, but with bearded face and head held between its shoulders—leap from the window into the darkness. I did not see Louis clearly. His head was lying on the table, and immediately all the circumstances of the former drama came back to me. But this time I wasted no time. Something glittered on the table, hilt towards me—knife or sword, I hardly knew which. I only knew that with it in my hand I was armed. I sprang through the window and gave chase.

Then very loud in my ears I heard the crack of a pistol, but felt no wound. I now think it had not even been fired at me. I pursued with the energy of a young stag. My mornings on the hills with Eben looking for the sheep now stood me in good stead—that is, good or bad according as to whether the man in front of me had another loaded pistol ready or not.

Behind me, but alas, too far to be any help, I could hear the shouting of men. Heathknowes was alarmed. Then came the pounding of feet, but I knew that none of them could run with me, while the thing or man in front proved fresher, and, as I feared at first, fleeter.

But, after all, I was young, and though I panted, and had a burning pain in my side, I held to it till I began to get my second wind. Then I made sure that, barring accidents, I could run him down. What should happen then I did not know. I had a vision, only for a moment but yet very clear and distinct, of Irma in the black gown of a young widow. But even this did not make me slacken in my stride.

Somehow the shine of the steel in my hand gave me courage, as also the crying of the men behind, albeit they did not seem to gain but rather to lose ground. Thirty yards ahead I could see my man running, his head very low, his arms close to his sides, a slender figure with a certain look of deformity. A long beard of some indeterminate colour like hay was blown back over one shoulder. Ever and anon he glanced round as he ran to measure my progress.

Suddenly the root of a tree tripped him and he went headlong. But he was agile too, for before I could be upon him, he was up again, and with something that shone like a long thin dagger in his hand, he threw himself upon me as if to take me by surprise. Now, it is very difficult when running hard to put oneself at once into a proper position of defence. And so, as it happened, I was nearly done. But I had been carrying the sword in my hand almost at arm’s length. I was conscious of no shock. Only all suddenly my assailant doubled and lay writhing, his dagger still shining in his hand.

I stopped and kept wide circling about him, fearing a trick. The moon was shining full on the open clearing of the glade where he had fallen. It was the little lawyer—he who had called himself Wringham Pollixfen Poole. Yet somehow he was different. His beard had grown to be of a curious foreign fashion and colour—but that perhaps might be the effect of the moonlight.

He never took his eyes off the shining steel in my hand.

“It is poisoned,” he groaned, his hand clapped to his breast, “I am a dead man—poisoned, poisoned!”And looking more carefully at what I had simply snatched in haste, I saw that I had in my hand the golden-hilted sword of honour which Lalor Maitland had given to the boy Louis to seal their friendship.

But immediately a greater wonder oppressed me, and rendered speechless those who now came panting up—my uncles and Boyd Connoway. The hay-coloured beard and disguises came away, snatched off in the man’s death-agony. The shiny brown coat opened to show a spotless ruffled shirt beneath. The wounded man never ceased to exclaim, “It is poisoned! It is poisoned! I am a dead man!” The wig fell off, and as life gave place to the stillness of death, out of the lined and twisted lineaments of the half-deformed lawyer Poole emerged the pale, calm, clear-cut features of Lalor Maitland.