er weapon that lay beside Samoval.
"A duelling sword!" Then he looked searchingly about him until his eyes
caught the gleam of the other blade near the wall, where himself he had
dropped it. "Ah!" he said, and went to pick it up. "Very odd!" He looked
up at the balcony, over the parapet of which his wife was leaning.
"Did you see anything, my dear?" he asked, and neither Tremayne nor she
detected the faint note of wicked mockery in the question.

There was a moment's pause before she answered him, faltering:

"N-no. I saw nothing." Sir Terence's straining ears caught no faintest
sound of the voice that had prompted her urgently from behind the
curtained windows.

"How long have you been there?" he asked her.

"A--a moment only," she replied, again after a pause. "I--I thought I
heard a cry, and--and I came to see what had happened." Her voice shook
with terror; but what she beheld would have been quite enough to account
for that.

The guard filed in through the doors from the official quarters, a
sergeant with a halbert in one hand and a lantern in the other, followed
by four men, and lastly by Mullins. They halted and came to attention
before Sir Terence. And almost at the same moment there was a sharp
rattling knock on the wicket in the great closed gates through which
Samoval had entered. Startled, but without showing any signs of it, Sir
Terence bade Mullins go open, and in a general silence all waited to see
who it was that came.

A tall man, bowing his shoulders to pass under the low lintel of that
narrow door, stepped over the sill and into the courtyard. He wore a
cocked hat, and as his great cavalry cloak fell open the yellow rays of
the sergeant's lantern gleamed faintly on a British uniform. Presently,
as he advanced into the quadrangle, he disclosed the aquiline features
of Colquhoun Grant.

"Good-evening, General. Good-evening, Tremayne," he greeted one and the
other. Then his eyes fell upon the body lying between them. "Samoval,
eh? So I am not mistaken in seeking him here. I have had him under very
close observation during the past day or two, and when one of my men
brought me word tonight that he had left his place at Bispo on foot and
alone, going along the upper Alcantara road, If had a notion that he
might be coming to Monsanto and I followed. But I hardly expected to
find this. How has it happened?"

"That is what I was just asking Tremayne," replied Sir Terence. "Mullins
discovered him her