sitting, with the
arm of Paul gently supporting him.

"Yes; I feel so much stronger and better," he answered brightly.

"I'm glad to hear it, but I think you'd better lie down now. If Mr.
Weevil came in now he would have a fit."

Paul thought it highly probable such a catastrophe would happen if the
master had any suspicion of what Hibbert had told him. So he gently laid
the patient down again.

"You'll come again, Percival?" he pleaded.

And Paul promised.

CHAPTER XXXI

A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE

The revelation that Paul had heard in the sick-room overwhelmed him. It
was not till he was in the open air that he realized what it all meant.
The foreign spy, for whom his father had sacrificed his life--the man
who, in turn, had tried to steal from him the packet which had been
entrusted to him by Mr. Moncrief--Hibbert's father! Was he standing on
his head or his heels?

Again he could feel the night wind on his face as he galloped along the
road to Redmead; again he saw himself confronted by Zuker and his
confederate; again he felt himself rising in the saddle and bringing
down his whip on the man's face; again he felt the thrill of joy that
leapt through his veins as he escaped from the clutches of his pursuers,
and bounded once more along the road; and then--then that feeling of
despair when Falcon suddenly sank to the ground, and he found that the
noble horse was dying. This man, the man for whom his father had died,
the man who had so relentlessly pursued him on the road to Redmead, the
man who had caused the death of Falcon--this man of all men Hibbert's
father, the father of the boy whom he had watched over and protected
ever since he came to Garside, the father of the boy he had loved as a
brother, and whom he had risked his own life to save, even as his father
had risked his life to save the life of Zuker so long ago!

It was indeed staggering. No wonder he hastened into the fresh air.
Spiders seemed spinning webs about his brain. He could neither see nor
think clearly.

"Where am I standing?" he asked himself, and simple as the question was,
it was not so simple to answer, for the world seemed suddenly
topsy-turvy.

Gradually the night air swept away the cobwebs, and he began to see
things in a clearer light. This man Zuker was a spy still; nothing had
changed since the day he had been found in his father's cabin, except
perhaps that he had grown more daring. A spy! What did that mean? I