within him into action, he wrenched
himself from Philip's arms, striving to speak. A trickle of fresh blood
ran over his face. Incoherent sounds rattled in his throat, and then,
overcome by his effort, he dropped back unconscious. Philip wound his
handkerchief about the wounded man's head and straightened out his
limbs. Then he rose to his feet and reloaded his revolver. His hands
were steady now. His brain was clear; the enervating thrill of
excitement had gone from his body. Only his heart beat like a racing
engine.

He turned and ran in the direction which Pierre's assailants had taken,
his head lowered, his revolver held in front of him, on a level with
his breast. He had not gone a hundred yards when something stopped him.
In his path, with its face turned straight up to the moonlit sky, lay
the body of a man. For an instant Philip bent over it. The broken blade
of Pierre's rapier glistened under the man's throat. One lifeless hand
clutched at it, as though in the last moment of life he had tried to
draw it forth. The face was distorted, the eyes were still open, the
lips parted. Death had come with terrible suddenness.

Philip bent lower, and stared into the face of the dead man. Where had
he seen that face before?

Suddenly he remembered. He drew back, and a cold sweat seemed to break
out all at once over his face and body. This man who lay with the
broken blade of Pierre Couchee's rapier in his breast had come ashore
from the London ship that day in company with Eileen and her father!

For a space he was overwhelmed by the discovery. Everything that had
happened--the scene upon the rock when he first met Jeanne, the arrival
of the ship, the moment's tableau on the pier when Jeanne and Eileen
stood face to face--rushed upon him now as he gazed down into the
staring eyes at his feet. What did it all mean? Why had Lord Fitzhugh's
name been sufficient to drag the half-breed back from the brink of
unconsciousness? What significance was there in this strange
combination of circumstances that persisted in drawing Pierre and
Jeanne into the plot that threatened himself? Had there been truth,
after all, in those last words that he impressed upon the fainting
senses of Pierre Couchee's message to Gregson?

He waited to answer none of the questions that leaped through his
brain. To-morrow some one would find Pierre, or Pierre would crawl down
into Churchill. And then there would be the dead man to account for. He
shu