ose who
were his enemies never dreamed that I should be able to help him. I was
only an ignorant muleteer, who did not know their language, and who
could not fathom their designs. But I did both, and I saved this great
man. It seems like some far-fetched melodrama, doesn't it? But the thing
is true. It leaked out little by little, I suppose, that I was a man of
some education and ability, and by-and-by I became bound up in the
fortunes of this great trading concern.

"It all fell in with my plans. I had learnt to hate you more and more,
and I determined that nothing should baulk me in my purpose. Only once
did I fear that I should fail in that which I had sworn to do. I was
stricken with a plague common to that part of the world, and I was given
up for dead. Even in my prosperity my great desire to live was that I
might express my hatred for you. But I got better, and I felt as though
the God in whom I had learnt to believe would deliver you into my hands;
for there was one thing that illness did for me, it altered my
appearance very materially--so much so that when I came back here no one
suspected who I was.

"I shall soon come to the end now. As soon as I was able I came to
England, determined that I would work your ruin, your disgrace. Nay, do
not fear; I am only telling you this that you may know what is your
right to know. I did not know what had happened to you; but I determined
that, wherever you were, I would find you, and whatever your
circumstances were, I would accomplish my purposes.

"I found you here--still unmarried, but apparently happy. I also found
that you were much admired, and that you were contemplating marriage
with that young squire. I made my plans. I will tell you what they were.
I would win your love; I felt sure I could do it; even if I could not
win that, I believed in the devil sufficiently to be sure that I could
gain your consent to marry me. I remembered, too, that I had won you in
the old days, and I hoped that I possessed something of the power by
which I won you then. Even if I failed, my purpose to have my revenge
should not be frustrated, for I hated you with all the intensity of my
being."

All the time Olive sat with wide, staring eyes and blanched face.
Sometimes she felt as though the recital were only a ghastly nightmare,
but when she looked into the man's face she felt its reality. The man
was Leicester, the man whom she believed had died six years before; but
even yet s