ect a letter.
The _Ida_ will, no doubt, return after she is unloaded. You can give
your letters to Captain Wilson."

"I suppose there's no other way of sending letters?"

"A coasting steamer, perhaps," said Steinwitz, "or a fishing boat
might put in at the island; but the _Ida_ will be your best means of
communicating with me."

"All right," said Gorman. "I'll let you know how things go on. But
don't be too sanguine. Donovan may refuse to sell."

He rose to go as he spoke. Steinwitz made one more remark before the
interview closed.

"One way or other," he said, "I hear very often from the island."

The words were spoken in a colourless tone; but Gorman felt vaguely
that they were a kind of threat. Steinwitz said that he heard
frequently from the island. Gorman thought the statement over.
Evidently Steinwitz had a correspondent there, some one who made use
of the _Ida_, of any coasting steamer which turned up, of the fishing
boats which put in. Steinwitz would not be entirely dependent on
Gorman's account of his mission. He would hear about it from some one
else, would know whether the sale had been pressed on Donovan.

Gorman left the office a little puzzled. The threat suggested by
Steinwitz' last words was veiled but hardly to be mistaken. It
certainly seemed to Gorman that he was to be watched by some one on
the island, his life spied on, his actions reported to this perfectly
absurd German shipowner; by him, no doubt, again reported to the
Emperor. The thing seemed almost too good to be true. Gorman, himself
a clever man, found it difficult to believe that another clever
man--Steinwitz certainly had brains of a sort--could possibly be such
an idiot as to practise melodrama, spies, secret reports and all the
rest of it, quite seriously.

Gorman found himself wondering what on earth Steinwitz expected to
learn from his correspondent in Salissa and what use the information
would be to him when he got it. Would Donovan be threatened with the
implacable wrath of the Emperor? Would he himself, Michael Gorman,
M.P. for Upper Offaly, incur some awful penalty if he did not persuade
Donovan to sell, if he did his best--he certainly meant to do his
best--to prevent a marriage between Miss Donovan and King Konrad Karl?
He chuckled with delight at the prospect and was more than ever glad
that he had promised to go to Salissa.

The voyage turned out to be a very agreeable one. Captain Wilson was
not, indeed, a cheerfu