e road and nodded down at him gaily.

But as he went indoors to join her at breakfast I ran after, and
catching him in the porch, besought him to have his wound seen to.
"And after that," said I, "there is another wounded man who needs your
attention. Unless you take his deposition quickly, I fear, sir, it may
be too late."

His eyebrows went up at this, but contracted again upon the twinge of
his wound. "I will attend to him first," said he shortly, and led the
way to the strong room. "Hullo!" was his next word, as he came to the
door--for in my perturbation and hurry I had forgotten to lock it.

"He is too weak to move," I stammered, as my poor excuse.

"Nevertheless it was not well done," he replied, pushing past me.

The prisoner lay on his pallet, gasping, with his eyes wide open in a
rigor. "Take her away!" he panted. "Take her away! She has been
here!"

"Hey?" I cried: but my Master turned on me sharply. To this day I know
not how much of evil he suspected.

"I will summon you if I need you. For the present you will leave us
here alone."

Nor can I tell what passed between them for the next half-an-hour.
Only that when he came forth my Master's face was white and set beneath
its dry smear of blood. Passing me, who waited at the end of the
corridor, he said, but without meeting my eyes:

"Go to him. The end is near."

I went to him. He lay pretty much as I had left him, in a kind of
stupor; out of which, within the hour, he started suddenly and began to
rave. Soon I had to send for a couple of our stablemen; and not too
soon. For by this he was foaming at the mouth and gnashing, the man in
him turned to beast and trying to bite, so that we were forced to strap
him to his bed. I shall say no more of this, the most horrible sight of
my life. The end came quietly, about six in the evening: and we buried
the poor wretch that night in the orchard under the chapel wall.

All that day, as you may guess, I saw nothing of the strange lady.
And on the morrow until dinner-time I had but a glimpse of her.
This was in the forenoon. She stood, with her hound beside her, in an
embrasure of the wall, looking over the sea: to the eye a figure so
maidenly and innocent and (in a sense) forlorn that I recalled Gil
Perez' tale as the merest frenzy, and wondered how I had come to listen
to it with any belief. Her seaward gaze would be passing over the very
spot where we had laid him: only a low wall hidin