his heart was sick with a sense of his own loneliness. He would be
left to fight out a useless battle--with Patsy far off and eternally
inaccessible. What after all would it matter if he took the king's
shilling and went to the wars?

But his own observant eyes automatically reporting on the darkening
landscape checked him.

"It is time for us to start!" he said quietly enough to Julian Wemyss,
who rose to his feet and put away the letter of the Princess which he
had been going over for the twentieth time.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE GIBBET RING

Ghastly behind the High Stile, just as you cross over into Raincy
property, rose the three tall trees of the Gibbet Ring. Once the Raincys
had jurisdiction to hang men and drown women, and it was on this
"moot-hill" that they dispensed their feudal laws as seemed to them
good. There was something grim about the place even now, and as Julian
approached, the High Stile stood up against the last flare of red in the
evening sky not yet blotted out by the mist, gaunt and sinister as a
guillotine.

And the dark silhouette of Adam Ferris, waiting for them, might well
have been that of the executioner himself. Stair saluted Adam Ferris,
who held out his hand frankly enough to his tenant's son.

"So, Stair," he said, "you have been missing for a long time from your
father's table. I had the honour of dining with Diarmid Garland
yesterday, and heard nothing of you. Ah, Julian! So this Captain of the
Coast has been taking care of you."

He turned to his brother-in-law, who had come more slowly up out of the
darkness of the glen, following Stair as closely as might be in the
uncertain dusk, for the eyes of the ex-ambassador were not habituated to
night duty like those of his guide.

Stair Garland drew back a little after he had seen that the two men were
safe in the shelter of the great Raincy ash trees. He would let them
talk the matter out. But his mind followed their argument, such as it
would doubtless be. He knew the end--that Julian would persuade Adam
Ferris to go to London to arrange the future of his daughter. Adam would
not be so easy to persuade. Not only would he dislike returning all the
way to London, but he would be far more doubtful than his kinsman as to
the power he could exercise over Patsy's choice.

Julian Wemyss naturally thought that no position could be better or more
fortunate for any girl than that which the Prince Eitel was offering his
niece. But Ad