nd
exaggerated monstrosity, till at last he had subsided into a heavy,
dreamless sleep.

Now, however, he awoke with a start. The sick man's eyes were wide
open, and were fixed upon him with an inquiring and puzzled expression.
He felt horribly guilty beneath their searching gaze--horribly mean--in
fact, he felt himself to be something next door to a thief.

Facts can assume a very cold and impartial aspect when they confront us
at our waking hour. Maurice Sellon felt strongly akin to a thief.

He had stolen his host's secret--nay, more--he had robbed him of actual
property. And it was beyond his power to make restitution, for he
himself had been arbitrarily deprived of such power; and at the
recollection of that ghostly, mysterious claw snatching the document
from him in the dead midnight, he shuddered inwardly. The whole
business smacked of witchcraft, and something abominably uncanny. He
could not account for it, any more than he could account for the fact
that he, Maurice Sellon, had crept on tiptoe to the bedside of the man
who lay at his mercy--ill and helpless--and had there and then robbed
him like a common thief.

All this time the two had been staring at each other, one from his
sick-bed, the other from his armchair. Sellon was the first to break
the silence.

"Well, old chap, how do you feel now?" he said, striving to throw into
his tone a bluff heartiness he was far from feeling. "Had a bad night
of it, I'm afraid?"

"Yes, I have rather," said Renshaw, slowly. "But--when did you come?
Have they looked after your horse?" And with the instinctive
hospitality characteristic of his class, he made a move as though to
rise and personally look to the supplying of the stranger's wants.

"Don't move. Don't think of moving, I beg!" cried the latter, putting
out his hand as if to arrest the attempt. "The fact is, I arrived last
evening, and found you--er--well, not quite the thing; so I just thought
I'd sit here in case you might want anything during the night."

"How very good of you! I must have had a touch of my old enemy--
up-country fever. I picked it up years ago in the Lembombo Mountains,
through staying on there too late at the end of a winter hunting trip,
and the worse of that sort of infernal business is that you are always
liable to a return of it. Yes, I remember now. I did feel most
uncommonly queer yesterday. And then you arrived and took care of me?
It is more than probable you