as I say, we will order
supper for two; for the lady and a gentleman. Whichever comes back alive
will tap at her door, and call her in to share the repast with him--she's
not off the premises. But we must not alarm her now; and above all
things we must not let the inn-people see us go out; it would look so odd
for two to go out, and only one come in. Ha! ha!'

'Ha! ha! exactly.'

'Are you ready?'

'Oh--quite.'

'Then I'll lead the way.'

He went softly to the door and downstairs, ordering supper to be ready in
an hour, as he had said; then making a feint of returning to the room
again, he beckoned to the singer, and together they slipped out of the
house by a side door.

* * * * *

The sky was now quite clear, and the wheelmarks of the brougham which had
borne away Laura's father, Lord Quantock, remained distinctly visible.
Soon the verge of the down was reached, the captain leading the way, and
the baritone following silently, casting furtive glances at his
companion, and beyond him at the scene ahead. In due course they arrived
at the chasm in the cliff which formed the waterfall. The outlook here
was wild and picturesque in the extreme, and fully justified the many
praises, paintings, and photographic views to which the spot had given
birth. What in summer was charmingly green and gray, was now rendered
weird and fantastic by the snow.

From their feet the cascade plunged downward almost vertically to a depth
of eighty or a hundred feet before finally losing itself in the sand, and
though the stream was but small, its impact upon jutting rocks in its
descent divided it into a hundred spirts and splashes that sent up a mist
into the upper air. A few marginal drippings had been frozen into
icicles, but the centre flowed on unimpeded.

The operatic artist looked down as he halted, but his thoughts were
plainly not of the beauty of the scene. His companion with the pistols
was immediately in front of him, and there was no handrail on the side of
the path toward the chasm. Obeying a quick impulse, he stretched out his
arm, and with a superhuman thrust sent Laura's husband reeling over. A
whirling human shape, diminishing downward in the moon's rays farther and
farther toward invisibility, a smack-smack upon the projecting ledges of
rock--at first louder and heavier than that of the brook, and then
scarcely to be distinguished from it--then a cessation, then the
splashing of the stream as before, and