dining-room to discuss their business. When the
barrack matter had been arranged De Stancy said, 'I have a little
commission to execute for my friend Mr. Somerset. I am to ask you if
this portrait of the person he suspects of unlawfully entering his room
is like the man you saw there?'

The speaker was seated on one side of the dining-table and Mr. Haze on
the other. As he spoke De Stancy pulled the envelope from his pocket,
and half drew out the photograph, which he had not as yet looked at,
to hand it over to the constable. In the act his eye fell upon the
portrait, with its uncertain expression of age, assured look, and hair
worn in a fringe like a girl's.

Captain De Stancy's face became strained, and he leant back in his
chair, having previously had sufficient power over himself to close the
envelope and return it to his pocket.

'Good heavens, you are ill, Captain De Stancy?' said the chief
constable.

'It was only momentary,' said De Stancy; 'better in a minute--a glass of
water will put me right.'

Mr. Haze got him a glass of water from the sideboard.

'These spasms occasionally overtake me,' said De Stancy when he had
drunk. 'I am already better. What were we saying? O, this affair of
Mr. Somerset's. I find that this envelope is not the right one.' He
ostensibly searched his pocket again. 'I must have mislaid it,' he
continued, rising. 'I'll be with you again in a moment.'

De Stancy went into the room adjoining, opened an album of portraits
that lay on the table, and selected one of a young man quite unknown
to him, whose age was somewhat akin to Dare's, but who in no other
attribute resembled him.

De Stancy placed this picture in the original envelope, and returned
with it to the chief constable, saying he had found it at last.

'Thank you, thank you,' said Cunningham Haze, looking it over. 'Ah--I
perceive it is not what I expected to see. Mr. Somerset was mistaken.'

When the chief constable had left the house, Captain De Stancy shut
the door and drew out the original photograph. As he looked at the
transcript of Dare's features he was moved by a painful agitation, till
recalling himself to the present, he carefully put the portrait into the
fire.

During the following days Captain De Stancy's manner on the roads, in
the streets, and at barracks, was that of Crusoe after seeing the print
of a man's foot on the sand.

V.

Anybody who had closely considered Dare at this time would have
d