how ill I was--an inglorious speech that came hard, though
not by any means untrue. "Move me with this fever on me?" said I; "it
would be as much as my miserable life is worth."

"I'm afraid," said he, "that it may be as much as your life's worth to
stay on here!" And there was such real fear, in his voice and eyes,
that it reconciled me there and then to the discomfort of a big revolver
between the mattress and the small of my back. "We must get you out
of it," he continued, "the moment you feel fit to stir. Shall we say
to-morrow?"

"If you like," I said, advisedly; "and if I can get some sleep to-day."

"Then to-morrow it is! You see I know it's the climate," he added,
jumping from tone to tone; "it couldn't have been those two or three
glasses of sound wine."

"Shall I tell you what it is?" I said, looking him full in the face,
with eyes that I dare say were wild enough with fever and insomnia.
"It's the burning of the Lady Jermyn!" I cried. "It's the faces and the
shrieks of the women; it's the cursing and the fighting of the men; it's
boat-loads struggling in an oily sea; it's husbands and wives jumping
overboard together; it's men turned into devils, it's hell-fire
afloat--"

"Stop! stop!" he whispered, hoarse as a crow. I was sitting up with my
hot eyes upon him. He was white as the quilt, and the bed shook with his
trembling. I had gone as far as was prudent, and I lay back with a glow
of secret satisfaction.

"Yes, I will stop," said I, "and I wouldn't have begun if you hadn't
found it so difficult to understand my trouble. Now you know what it
is. It's the old trouble. I came up here to forget it; instead of that
I drink too much and tell you all about it; and the two things together
have bowled me over. But I'll go to-morrow; only give me something to
put me asleep till then."

"I will!" he vowed. "I'll go myself to the nearest chemist, and he shall
give me the very strongest stuff he's got. Good-by, and don't you stir
till I come back--for your own sake. I'll go this minute, and I'll ride
like hell!" And if ever two men were glad to be rid of each other, they
were this young villain and myself.

But what was his villany? It was little enough that I had overheard
at the window, and still less that poor Eva had told me in her hurried
lines. All I saw clearly was that the Lady Jermyn and some hundred souls
had perished by the foulest of foul play; that, besides Eva and myself,
only the incendiaries h