nen sternly. "What horses can climb these cliffs?"

"Don't answer his questions!" commanded Ygerne.

"Silence is as good as the lies I'd get," retorted Drennen.

He closed the heavy panelled door behind turn, dropping into place an
iron bolt which fastened staple and hasp. There was one other door at
the far end of the long room; he moved toward it, at all times watching
Garcia and Ygerne. Here was a smaller room, perhaps a third the size
of the first, without doors, its windows boarded up with thick ax-hewn
slabs. The floor of this room had been wrenched loose and torn away;
there were big chests still sunken in the soil beneath, the boxes
crumbling and evidently broken in their hasty rifling.

He came back into the larger room. Sefton and Lemarc, when they came,
must enter through the door at the front. And he could do nothing but
wait, his heart burning with the feverish hope that they would come
before Max and the others. He drew a bench close to the door and sat
down, his face turned so that he could at once watch Ygerne and Garcia
and not lose sight of the door. He rose again, almost immediately,
picked up the two revolvers and the knife, dropped them to the floor
under his bench and sat down again.

Ygerne in a little, her eyes never leaving his face, sat where she had
been standing, upon the rug amidst the scattered gold. Now and then
her fingers stole from her lap to the old coins about her; once or
twice her fingers travelled slowly to her breast where the diamonds lay
hidden.

Garcia did not move. As commanded he faced the wall. Once or twice
only he turned his head a little, his eyes paying no heed to Drennen
but seeking Ygerne. And his eyes were not gay now, but restless and
troubled.

In a deep silence through which the faint murmur of the branches above
the Chateau Bellaire spoke like a quiet sigh, they waited. To each,
with his own bitter thoughts, the time writhed slowly like a wounded
serpent.

Upon a little thing did many human destinies depend that summer
afternoon. Though a man's destiny be always suspended by a mere silken
thread, not always is it given to him to see the thread itself and know
how fragile it is. Had Lieutenant Max been five minutes later in
picking up Drennen's trail . . . had Sefton and Lemarc returned to the
"chateau" five minutes earlier, God knows where the story would have
ended.

As it was it was Max's tread which Drennen's eager ears first heard
dr