Early dawn in a house where the new-dead lie unheeding whether it be darkness or day. Dawn when those who have seen the light of life fade from a beloved face watch the slow sunlight steal once more over the edge of the world, and claim all things for its own.

Yet watching alone, how peaceful such a dawn may be, when one can face death, not as a thing apart, but as a part of life; when there is no need to cloud its kindly form with sentimentalities, when we need not drug ourselves into disregarding its dignity by some narcotic of belief in life to come, when it is enough to feel that this life has passed where all life goes.

In the old Keep, however, where the master lay dead in his study among his fishing-rods and guns, as they had left him till the inquest should be over, there was no one near enough to the dead man so to watch, for Helen was still unconscious in her room upstairs. Dr. Ramsay, whose hands were full with many claimants on his care, spoke of a severe nervous crisis, which had evidently been coming on for some time. Her best chance was this semi-cataleptic state from which she would recover in her own good time. So she lay in her simple white room, on her simple little bed, and the dawn stole in slowly through the open window bringing the dayspring song of birds with it. But she was not there. She might have been with her father for all the bystanders could tell.

Ned, his face drawn with pain from the fractured arm over which Dr. Ramsay had instantly looked severe, but for which Ned refused to lay himself up absolutely until certain necessary details had been arranged, looked in and envied her. He had told the doctor of her visit to his room, and his wild stern-chase of her to Betty Cam's chair, and of his wonder--a wonder that grew as he thought over it--as to how she could possibly have got home, changed her dress and come on in the Wrexham's motor in so short a space of time. Still she had done it.

Evidently she had done it, the doctor had replied guardedly, and there, in the stress of many calls, the subject had dropped.

And yet as Ned went about giving orders in hopes of lessening anxieties and distress, he was remembering the strange unkenned look he had noticed on his cousin's face. Was it possible that--No! it was impossible. Anyhow he had no time to think it over as yet.

The roll-call of inmates had, thank Heaven! been on the whole satisfactory. Only two had failed to answer. Mrs. Massingham and, curiously enough, his friend Charteris, who had arranged to leave the next morning when his attack of Indian fever should have passed away. The only man who knew of the danger! It was a coincidence certainly. As for Mrs. Massingham, the fright must have brought on one of her heart attacks; else there was no reason why she should not have escaped, taking Maidie with her; it had not been a good life anyhow. But what an awful home-coming for the husband! He might arrive that very day, but it would be better if he did not. Not for a few days, till the whole thing, body and soul alike, should have gone out of ken for ever.

Then there was the ship. It was a transport from India, a bit out of its course through having damaged an engine. It had mistaken the fire for the lighthouse further west, and had struck lightly on a sunken rock just off the headland beyond Cam's Bay. It seemed none the worse, and would most likely float off in the next tide or two as the wind strengthened. In the meantime that would entail another funeral, as they had had a death on board that night.

So much Mr. Hirsch told Ned, when the latter went to see him about wiring to the office of the new company.

"I've looked to that," he replied curtly, "and I must get all these" (a perfect pile of forms lay beside him) "off at once; only the nuisance is my motor is damaged."

"Ted Cruttenden is cycling with mine," began Ned. Mr. Hirsch looked up quickly--"You will be careful, won't you?"

"I won't foul my own nest more than I can help," said Ned bitterly.

"That's right! And you know----" Mr. Hirsch was still writing hurriedly--"I don't believe it was the wires at all. It certainly began in the back premises, and they tell me the cook was dead drunk after dinner, and half the servants as well--they were dancing break-downs to the gramaphone."

"That doesn't take away the taste," burst out Ned passionately, "or take away the responsibility for having put such a ghastly monstrosity on that point, before that sea, under the stars of heaven----"

Mr. Hirsch looked up with the surprised kindly look an elder gives to a child who has suddenly burst out crying over a broken toy.

"You really ought to go to bed, Lord Blackborough," he said. "All this is so exhausting to the nerves. I shall do so, when I have sent off my telegrams."

Was it the roll of the double r which made Ned inclined to kick Mr. Hirsch? It was a relief when Ted Cruttenden ended the conversation by entering in the silent, unobtrusive way, which people adopt in the house of mourning.

"Messages ready?" he asked.

"Mine are! Mr. Hirsch has some. I suppose you wanted to be off, It's a shocking bad road to Haverton," remarked Ned, full of ill-humour as he left the room.

"I shall not go to Haverton though," said Ted. "I shall save time by cycling to Wellhampton. Five miles further, but there's an all-night office, and it seems a pity to waste time till eight o'clock."

"Good," nodded Mr. Hirsch, "though----" here he gave one of his short explosive laughs--"I am in no particular hurry. I must give Jenkin time--good Lord, what a relief to get rid of Jenkin--ahem!" He pulled himself up hurriedly and went on writing.

It was the first time Ted had come to close quarters with a millionaire, a millionaire too of European reputation as a financier more than as mere money seeker, and the effect was stimulating. It roused his admiration, his imagination. He stood at the window, waiting and watching Mr. Hirsch's head--it was growing, in truth, a trifle bald at the crown--as it bent over his papers and thinking what it must feel like to possess the art of transmuting baser things to gold.

"I will give you a sovereign," began the great man condescendingly. "One is in cipher, and that costs. The change in stamps, if you please. I have many letters to write."

Typical of the man, thought Ted Cruttenden, while Mr. Hirsch, noticing how careful the young man was in discriminating between his and Lord Blackborough's telegrams, but putting them into different pockets, smiled. "You are metodical, I see," he remarked, with just that faint slur over the th which occasionally told he was not English. "It is a great gift in business."

Ted smiled also, and flushed with pleasure, since Mr. Hirsch's praise was worth having; and so, then and there, almost as if some chemical affinity had manifested itself between the molecules composing his brain and Mr. Hirsch's, he made up his mind to try and follow his example. He was no fool; other people succeeded, why not he?

As he rode off his mind was full of this new determination. And yet, one short week ago he had thought himself uncommonly lucky to have pushed himself so far up the ladder as to be in receipt of a hundred and fifty pounds a year. For it must not be forgotten that he was no-man's son. His mother had refused to give his father's name. When she lay dying, and her people, seeking to trick her, asked what name the child should be called, she had smiled derisively at them. "Edward Cruttenden, of course," had been her reply, the latter being her own name, a common enough one in the Black Country.

Ted had thought all this out many times; yet it came back to him--with no rancour against his mother, but a good deal against his unknown father. On this fine June morning as he made his way across the high Cornish tableland, dipping down--with both brakes on--into some steep combe and thereinafter climbing out of it again, pushing his bicycle.

If he had only begun earlier to think about making money, he would have had a better chance with Aura. No doubt at his age Hirsch had been operating on the Exchange and promoting companies.

Promoting! Operating! These were words indeed!

But it must be uphill work--so was this last combe; for it was to be one of those hot June days, when the freshness of dawn is gone in half an hour, and the very grass has no trace of dew on it.

He sat down at the top of the hill and drew out his handkerchief in order to mop his face.

In doing so one of Mr. Hirsch's telegrams came out also and fluttered to the ground.

It was the one in cipher, and, as he glanced at it, he found that by a pure chance he knew it, or something very like it. His little friend and admirer in the stockbroker's office was an expert in ciphers, and had shown him several. This--one of the easiest--amongst the number.

He could not choose but read the first word, "Buy."

Buy! That was curious. He should have expected it to be "sell."

Buy what?

Buy Sea-views all below five shillings. Hirsch.

He sat looking at the words for some time, puzzled, then rode on, his mind busy with the problem; but the puzzle remained until, as he was going into the telegraph office at Wellhampton, he met Mr. Jenkin coming out. Then the memory of Mr. Hirsch's laugh of relief at "getting rid of Jenkin," which he had hardly noticed at the time, came back to him. Jenkin apparently was to be given time to sell, while Mr. Hirsch was to buy. It was a straight lead-over. What if he were to follow it even to the extent of but a hundred pounds? His heart gave a great throb; he felt as a man might, when put on a horse for the first time and the reins given into his hand. Who was to prevent him going where he chose--except, of course, the horse!

He returned to the Keep by breakfast time, but for a wonder he had no appetite, since he was of that healthy strong-nerved sort to whom even personal sorrow comes as an expenditure of force which requires recuperation. And there was no personal feeling in this tragedy except for Blackborough's share in it; for that he was unfeignedly sorry. He, however, had been finally ordered to his room by Dr. Ramsay who was too busy to speak to any one. The Wrexhams left early, followed at intervals by the other guests, and the Keep settled down into the slack collapse which always follows on the excitement of a catastrophe. The servants seemed to remember they had been up all night; Mr. Hirsch was the only person who was really awake, but Ted did not somehow care to see Mr. Hirsch; though as the day wore on and the latter went off once more to Cam's point, Ted took down some telegrams which had come for him, and watched him read them anxiously. They seemed satisfactory, but by this time Ted was telling himself he had behaved like a fool in sending that wire to his friend on the Stock Exchange.

The desolation on the point, where workmen were still searching for any traces of Mr. Charteris' body, made him still more depressed, so he strolled over to Camshaven, thereby letting himself in for additional dreariness; since, just as he abutted on the little quay, he saw one of the transport's boats, disembarking a coffin. The dead officer, of course. Poor chap, to die like that within sight of home was rough luck. He stood with bared head watching the guard of honour form up and prepare to take the body to the church, where it was to lie until directions came by wire from the relatives.

"You don't happen to know the name?" he asked of the local pilot who was close beside him.

"Not for sure, sir," he replied, "tho' I did hear'm say Massin'ham; same name as the poor madam they people burnt in her bed las' night."

"Massingham!" echoed Ted--"that is very curious."

It was. Indeed, Mr. Hirsch, coming back to the Keep half an hour afterwards, was quite pale, and called for a whisky-and-soda before he could explain to Dr. Ramsay the extraordinary coincidence of Major Massingham's body being brought in for burial to Camshaven, where those of his poor wife and child already awaited him as it were. But he, Mr. Hirsch, had seen the captain of the transport, and everything was quite simple--terribly simple. Major Massingham had come on board at Bombay ill, but had not, however, let his people know of his illness, as he expected the voyage to set him up. He had unfortunately taken a chill off Gibraltar: pneumonia had set in, and in his delirium he had constantly talked of his wife and child, and begged not to be buried at sea. The latter idea had been quite an obsession with him; almost the last words he spoke being "Not at sea--not at sea!" That had been two hours before the ship struck, and when they discovered there was no danger, it had seemed another curious coincidence to ensure poor Massingham's wish. But the whole affair was ...

Here Mr. Hirsch became quite unintelligible in his admixture of English and German.

"It is certainly--curious," assented Dr. Ramsay thoughtfully; "very curious. But it is just as well he should come home dead--the news would have broken him. By the way, I don't want Lord Blackborough disturbed. There is a nasty splinter that will give trouble; and he was in such pain, I ordered a sleeping-draught. Indeed----" Here he smiled. "I am thinking of a sleep myself till dinner time."

"I also," yawned Mr. Hirsch. "Mein Gott! Tragedy is fatiguing off the stage as well as on it, and this poor Major Massingham ... Himmel! es ist un-be-greiflich-auf-erlegbar!" And he went off to his room, looking a perfect wreck, aged by ten years; for deep down below the hard shell which grubbing for gold requires, his heart was soft. And these things were uncomfortable--they were not in the bond--they belonged to a spiritual life in which he had no part.

They weighed heavily on Ted Cruttenden also, for he had the Englishman's innate antagonism to anything which hints at the unknown, anything which might suggest a wider outlook than the one he already possesses. But the hundred pounds he had adventured, following Mr. Hirsch's lead, weighed on him still more heavily. Why had he been so impulsive? At the most he could gain three hundred; and what would Mr. Hirsch say if it were to come out? Not that it mattered, since he was not likely to see much more of Mr. Hirsch, for he must go back to Blackborough next morning. So, after a time, he also sought his room and a rest.

Dr. Ramsay, however, was deprived of his; for, looking in while passing to see how Lord Blackborough fared, he found him not only wide awake, but greatly excited by the news which a servant had brought him.

"Curse the fool!" said Peter Ramsay vexedly. "I made sure you would be asleep. Yes! it is extremely curious, but----"

"What does it mean, doctor--that's what I want to know," burst in Ned. "What is it, this strange something which every now and again seems to show us a solemn, shrouded face, and then disappears in mocking, devilish laughter--in charlatans' tricks?"

Dr. Ramsay shook his head. "If I could tell you that, Lord Blackborough, I--well! For one thing, I should be the richest man in the world. All we doctors can say is that there is something--something which can be explained away if one chooses to explain it away. But the explanation isn't scientific. It is easy to say a man is mad because he believes himself to be the Emperor of China, but what about the question, 'Why does a man think he is the Emperor of China when he is mad?' We have got to answer that, and show what it is which induces delusions and hysteria, and why hypnotic sleep causes certain specific alterations in the body corporate, as it does. But we've only just woke up to the fact that we stand on the verge of some great discovery; we've only just begun to question the nerve centres, and see the incalculable power of suggestion. Now take this case of your cousin's," he continued eagerly. "Whatever it may or may not be, it is certain that I suggested to her first that she was mentally unstable; second, that she might be able to project herself ... then Lady Wrexham slips in with her crystal-gazing suggestion--and--and the thing is done."

"There is something else," said Ned slowly, almost reluctantly, "which might--we were talking of old Betty Cam in the morning--she and I--and I told her it wasn't safe for her to be always watching the sea--I warned her--in joke of course--of her hereditary----" Here he broke off impatiently. "But it is of no use talking--the thing is frankly--impossible."

"Hardly that," remarked Dr. Ramsay dryly. "We have to learn, apparently, that many things are possible--at times."

Ned looked at him curiously. "One wouldn't credit you with such beliefs, Ramsay," he said.

"I don't credit them myself," replied the doctor shortly. "Personally I wish these phenomena didn't exist. They complicate the equation of life tremendously. But they are there. It is no use dismissing them as hysterical manifestations. That only alters the title of the problem, and we have to refer to the phenomena again under the heading 'What is hysteria?'"

"Of one thing I am certain," remarked Ned suddenly, with conviction: "it was not Helen altogether, as she is now, whom I left in Betty Cam's chair last night. I have been going over the whole incident in my mind, and I am conscious of having had a sense all through that there was something unkenned, something not quite real----"

"The question is," put in Dr. Ramsay, "how much she will remember when she wakes, and that cannot be very long now, for she was much more normal when I went in to see her last, two hours ago. I shall look in again as I go upstairs."

"I hope she will remember nothing," said Ned quickly.

Peter Ramsay shook his head. "It may be everything; you cannot possibly tell----" he broke off as a knock was heard at the door, and a voice said, "May I come in?" "My God!" he continued, "there she is!"

It was indeed Helen who, entering as he held open the door, passed swiftly to her cousin's side.

"Poor Ned!" she said, her face, on which showed the marks of recent tears, full of a grateful, affectionate solicitude. "How foolish it has been of me to leave you to bear the brunt of it all; but I am all right now, and shall manage. He ought to be in bed, oughtn't he?" she continued, her eyes narrowing a little as they met Peter Ramsay's, her whole expression showing for an instant a half-puzzled pain, as if she sought for some memory of past trouble. "I am sure you think so--don't you?"

"I think so very much indeed, Mrs. Tressilian," he replied. "Your cousin's arm----"

"Poor arm!" she interrupted softly, "that was broken before I came down--I was asleep, I suppose, when they called me--it seems so strange that I could have slept, and I seem to have forgotten everything except the awful suspense; then the awful night on the point--but--but you couldn't have saved him, Ned. It was the stairs--if only they had been fireproof!--for he knew every turn. I--I have been down to see him, Ned, and he looks so peaceful--so content. You see he had done all he could--all a Pentreath should have done--so--so it is best. And now, dear, you really must go to bed. I can manage nicely. I will send to meet the Massinghams--poor souls!--how terribly sad, and how inexplicable it all is!"

Inexplicable indeed! They looked at each other silently.

She evidently knew all that they knew, but of what they did not know she also knew nothing. The interval between the time when she had passed upstairs to her room, joking and laughing with the others, and her first sight of the halo of fire had simply lapsed into a great suspense.

It was as well, Dr. Ramsay admitted to himself, and yet he felt annoyed. For, looking at Helen Tressilian's face, he recognised that his chance--and the chance of science was over.

In all probability that would be her one solitary intrusion into the unknown dimension which whetted his curiosity so much. She was normal now; she might conceivably marry some deserving idiot, and settle down to half a dozen children. She might even become a nurse!

All things were possible to the calm self-possession with which she insisted on rest for them both. So, in an evil temper, he followed her advice.

Meanwhile Ted Cruttenden, after wandering about aimlessly, uncertain whether to bless or curse himself for his morning's work, had also sought rest, and was asleep dreaming of Aura. Aura, as he had seen her in her blue linen smock and sandals, Aura as he could picture her in pink satin and diamonds. Which was the most beautiful, the most beautified? He scarcely knew. When he felt inclined to bless himself, it was because he could picture her in the latter; when curses came it was because he regretted the former.

So to him in troubled slumber, came a knock at the door.

"Come in," he called drowsily; then sat up with beating heart on the edge of his bed, feeling for his slippers with his feet. He did not know that the dapper little figure at the door was to him Mephistopheles, that he was about to sell his soul to the devil; but he was vaguely conscious of an approaching crisis in his life.

"Soh! my young friend, you have bought Sea View shares! Why?"

The room was growing dark. There was a wide interval of shadowy light from the windows between the young man as, having found mental and bodily foothold, he stood coatless, defiant, as if prepared to fight Fate, and Mr. Hirsch decently robed for dinner, and with, as ever, the large white flower of a blameless life in his button-hole. Through the open window the mellow pipe of a blackbird, full of the glad song of wood and dale, forced its way insistently. The memory of it lingered with Ted always. In after years that joyous invitation to the wilds always seemed to sound in his ears whenever a question of choice arose.

Now, though he heard it, he was too busy to heed it.

"Why?" he echoed. "I bought them, sir--because I--I believed in you ... there you have it in a nutshell."

"And why did you believe in me?"

Ted, having recovered his confidence, gave a short laugh. "Upon my soul, I don't know. I did it--that's all."

"Then you had no private intimation--you had not overheard anything--you--it was unvertraute gut--no more?"

"You gave me a lead over yourself, you know," replied Ted argumentatively. "You said Jenkin must have time--and the rest followed--I couldn't help knowing the cipher, could I?"

A faint chuckle came from the gloom by the door. "Soh! you have prains! Mr. Cruttenden, I ought to be angry, I ought to tell you many things, but I have searched long for one to believe in me. I need him. Let this be--you have won three hundred pounds. I give you this per year as my clerk. You accept?"

It was all over in a moment. The blackbird ceased his song, and as Ted Cruttenden hurriedly dressed for dinner his head was in a whirl. This was a chance indeed. By Christmas he might stand on more equal ground. And after Christmas? His fancy ran riot in pink satin and diamonds.

But, when he left with Mr. Hirsch next morning, the latter was in a towering bad temper. Lord Blackborough was a fool. He had refused to listen to reason, and Mrs. Tressilian was no better. They had both of them declined to be mixed up any further with the hotel, and would not even let him buy them out. The insurance had no doubt been made in accordance with business principles, but----

"He will divest himself of every farthing in two years if he goes on being so verdammlich gerecht. Yes! I give him two years to be a pauper," said poor Mr. Hirsch, and then his eyes positively filled with tears as he considered how all his efforts to secure a competency for Helen had failed.