rough
the chilled water, which washed his body to the nostrils and numbed his
legs till he could scarcely move them.

And now, of a sudden, his feet touched gravel. He stumbled forward in
the shadow of overhanging trees and saw her wading shoreward, a
dripping, silvery shape on the shoal.

Then, as he staggered up to her, breathless, where she was standing on
the pebbled shore, he saw her join both hands, cup-shape, and lift them
to her lips.

And out of her mouth poured diamond, sapphire, and emerald in a dazzling
stream, -- and among them, one great, flashing gem blazing in the
starlight, -- the Flaming Jewel!

Like a naiad of the lake she stood, white, slim, silent, the heaped gems
glittering in her snowy hands, her face framed by the curling masses of
her wet hair.

Then, slowly she turned her head to Stormont.

"These are what Quintana came for," she said. "Could you put them into
your pocket?"

* * * * *

Episode Eight

Cup and Lip

* * * * *

I

Two miles beyond Clinch's Dump, Hal Smith pulled Stormont's horse to a
walk. He was tremendously excited.

With naive sincerity he believed that what he had done on the spur of
the moment had been the only thing to do.

By snatching the Flaming Jewel from Quintana's very fingers he had
diverted that vindictive bandit's fury from Eve, from Clinch, from
Stormont, and had centred it upon himself.

More than that, he had sown the seeds of suspicion among Quintana's own
people. they never could discover Salzar's body. Always they must
believe that it was Nicolas Salzar and no other who so treacherously
robbed them, and who rode away in a rain of bullets, shaking the
emblazoned morocco case above his masked head in triumph, derision and
defiance.

At the recollection of what had happened, Hal Smith drew bridle, and,
sitting his saddle there in the false dawn, threw back his handsome head
and laughed until the fading stars overhead swam in his eyes through
tears of sheerest mirth.

For he was still young enough to have had the time of his life. Nothing
in the Great War had so thrilled him. For, in what had just happened,
there was humour. There had been none in the Great Grim Drama.

Still, Smith began to realise that he had taken the long, long chance of
the opportunist who rolls the bones with Death. He had kept his pledge
to the little Grand Duchess. It was a clean job. It was even good
drama----

The picturesque angle of the affair sh