ithing coils like a well-thrown lasso. Oh, if
he had only let well enough alone and not brought a detective to the
house. Yet how was he to know that the man would try to fix a murder on
him, himself? Useless for him to speak, to deny. The revolver-shot and
the cruel little bullet (which showed there were others who possessed
that sort of fire-arm besides himself) proved too easily, upon the
circumstantial evidence theory at all events, that his word was naught.

He went through the next hour or two like a man who has been tortured.
Silent, but bearing the mark of it upon his white face and in his haggard
eyes. And indeed his situation was a terrible and strange one. He had set
the wheels of the law in motion; he himself had brought the relentless
Hamilton Cleek into the affair and now he was called a murderer!

In the little cell where they placed him, away from the gaping,
murmuring, gesticulating knot of villagers that had marked his progress
to the police-station--for news flies fast in the country, especially
when there is a viper-tongue like Borkins's to wing it on its way--he was
thankful for the momentary peace and quiet that the place afforded. At
least he could _think_--think and pace up and down the narrow room with
its tiny barred window too high for a man to reach, and its hard camp
bedstead with the straw mattress, and go through the whole miserable
fabrication that had landed him there.

The second day of confinement brought him a visitor. It was 'Toinette.
His jailer--a rough-haired village-hand who had taken up with the "Force"
and wore the uniform as though it belonged to someone else (which indeed
it had)--brought him news of her arrival. It cut him like a lash to see
her thus, and yet the longing for her was so great that it superseded all
else. So he faced the man with a grim smile.

"I suppose, Bennett, that I shall be allowed to see Miss Brellier? You
have made enquiries?"

"Yes, sir." Bennett was crestfallen and rather ashamed of his duty.

"Any restrictions?"

Bennett hedged.

"Well--if you please--Sir Nigel--that is--"

"What the devil are they, then?"

"Constable Roberts give orders that I was to stay 'ere with you--but I
can turn me back," returned Bennett, with flushing countenance. "Shall
I show the lady in?"

"Yes."

She came. Her frock was of some clinging gray material that made her look
more fairy-like than ever. A drooping veil of gray gauze fell like a mist
before her f