e. Natasha raised her eyes for a moment and then
dropped them. She knew what was coming, and a bright red flush rose
up from her white throat to the roots of her dusky, lustrous hair.

"Richard Arnold, in the first communication I ever had with you, I
told you that if you used the powers you held in your hand well and
wisely, you should, in the fulness of time, attain to your heart's
desire. You have proved your faith and obedience in the hour of
trial, and your strength and discretion in the day of battle. Now it
is yours to ask and to have."

For all answer Arnold put out his hand and took hold of Natasha's,
and said quietly but clearly--

"Give me this!"

"So be it!" said Natas. "What you have worthily won you will worthily
wear. May your days be long and peaceful in the world to which you
have given peace!"

And so it came to pass that three days later, in the little private
chapel of Alanmere Castle, the two men who held the destinies of the
world in their hands, took to wife the two fairest women who ever
gave their loveliness to be the crown of strength and the reward of
loyal love.

For a week the Lord of Alanmere kept open house and royal state, as
his ancestors had done five hundred years before him. The
conventional absurdity of the honeymoon was ignored, as such brides
and bridegrooms might have been expected to ignore it. Arnold and
Natasha took possession of a splendid suite of rooms in the eastern
wing of the Castle, and the two new-wedded couples passed the first
days of their new happiness under one roof without the slightest
constraint; for the Castle was vast enough for solitude when they
desired it, and yet the solitude was not isolation or self-centred
seclusion.

Tremayne's private wire kept them hourly informed of what was going
on in London, and when necessary the _Ithuriel_ was ready to traverse
the space between Alanmere and the capital in an hour, as it did more
than once to the great delight and wonderment of Tremayne's bride, to
whom the marvellous vessel seemed a miracle of something more than
merely human skill and genius.

So the days passed swiftly and happily until the Christmas bells of
1904 rang out over the length and breadth of Christendom, for the
first time proclaiming in very truth and fact, so far as the Western
world was concerned, "Peace on earth, Goodwill to Man."

[Illustration: "Into the vast, white, silent wilderness, out of which
none save the guards were des