intolerable pain swept through Stewart's aching head,
and he gave another groan which was almost like a child's sob. But at
just that moment the door which led into the central hall opened, and
the Irishman O'Hara came into the room. Captain Stewart sprang to his
feet to meet him, and he caught the other man by the arm in his
eagerness.

"How is he?" he cried out. "How is he? How badly was he hurt?"

"The patient?" said O'Hara. "Let go my arm! Hang it, man, you're
pinching me! Oh, he'll do well enough. He'll be fit to hobble about in a
week or ten days. The bullet went clean through his leg and out again
without cutting an artery. It was a sort of miracle--and a damned lucky
miracle for all hands, too! If we'd had a splintered bone or a severed
artery to deal with I should have had to call in a doctor. Then the
fellow would have talked, and there'd have been the devil to pay. As it
is, I shall be able to manage well enough with my own small skill. I've
dressed worse wounds than that in my time. By Jove, it was a miracle,
though!" A sudden little gust of rage swept him. He cried out: "That
confounded fool of a gardener, that one-eyed Michel, ought to be beaten
to death. Why couldn't he have slipped up behind this fellow and knocked
him on the head, instead of shooting him from ten paces away? The
benighted idiot! He came near upsetting the whole boat!"

"Yes," said Captain Stewart, with a sharp, hard breath, "he should have
shot straighter or not at all."

The Irishman stared at him with his bright blue eyes, and after a moment
he gave a short laugh.

"Jove, you're a bloodthirsty beggar, Stewart!" said he. "That would have
been a rum go, if you like! Killing the fellow! All his friends down on
us like hawks, and the police and all that! You can't go about killing
people in the outskirts of Paris, you know--at least not people with
friends. And this chap looks like a gentleman, more or less, so I take
it he has friends. As a matter of fact, his face is rather familiar. I
think I've seen him before, somewhere. You looked at him just now
through the crack of the door; do you know who he is? Coira tells me he
called out to Arthur by name, but Arthur says he never saw him before
and doesn't know him at all."

Captain Stewart shivered. It had not been a pleasant moment for him,
that moment when he had looked through the crack of the door and
recognized Ste. Marie.

"Yes," he said, half under his breath--"yes, I know w