es, partly
from faintness, partly to hide from the other poor fellows the joy that
leaped to them. One by one the brave lads came up and shook hands with
Creagh and me in congratulation. Their good-will took me by the throat,
and I could only wring their hands in silence.

On our way back to the prison Creagh turned to me with streaming eyes. "Do
you know whom I have to thank for this, Kenneth?"

"No. Whom?"

"Antoinette Westerleigh, God bless her dear heart!"

And that set me wondering. It might be that Charles and Aileen alone had
won my reprieve for me, but I suspected Volney's fine hand in the matter.
Whether he had stirred himself in my affairs or not, I knew that I too
owed my life none the less to the leal heart of a girl.

CHAPTER XVI

VOLNEY'S GUEST

Of all the London beaux not one had apartments more elegant than Sir
Robert Volney.[3] It was one of the man's vanities to play the part of a
fop, to disguise his restless force and eager brain beneath the vapid
punctilios of a man of fashion. There were few suspected that his reckless
gayety was but a mask to hide a weary, unsatisfied heart, and that this
smiling debonair gentleman with the biting wit was in truth the least
happy of men. Long he had played his chosen role. Often he doubted whether
the game were worth the candle, but he knew that he would play it to the
end, and since he had so elected would bear himself so that all men should
mark him. If life were not what the boy Robert Volney had conceived it; if
failure were inevitable and even the fruit of achievement bitter; if his
nature and its enveloping circumstance had proven more strong than his
dim, fast-fading, boyish ideals, at least he could cross the stage
gracefully and bow himself off with a jest. So much he owed himself and so
much he would pay.

Something of all this perhaps was in Sir Robert Volney's mind as he lay on
the couch with dreamy eyes cast back into the yesterdays of life, that dim
past which echoed faintly back to him memories of a brave vanished youth.
On his lips, no doubt, played the half ironic, half wistful smile which
had become habitual to the man.

And while with half-shut eyes his mind drifted lazily back to that golden
age forever gone, enter from the inner room, Captain Donald Roy Macdonald,
a cocked pistol in his hand, on his head Volney's hat and wig, on his back
Volney's coat, on his feet Volney's boots. The baronet eyed the Highlander
with mild ast