buildings and below it a
green speck--a starboard light. The information he had gained that day
enabled him to recognize in these lights two steamers passing one
another at the harbor mouth.

"Red to red," Alan murmured to himself. "Green to green--Red to red,
perfect safety, go ahead!" he repeated.

It brought him, with marvelous vividness, back to Constance Sherrill.
Events since he had talked with her that morning had put them far apart
once more; but, in another way, they were being drawn closer together.
For he knew now that she was caught as well as he in the mesh of
consequences of acts not their own. Benjamin Corvet, in the anguish of
the last hours before fear of those consequences had driven him away,
had given her a warning against Spearman so wild that it defeated
itself; for Alan merely to repeat that warning, with no more than he
yet knew, would be equally futile. But into the contest between
Spearman and himself--that contest, he was beginning to feel, which
must threaten destruction either to Spearman or to him--she had
entered. Her happiness, her future, were at stake; her fate, he was
certain now, depended upon discovery of those events tied tight in the
mystery of Alan's own identity which Spearman knew, and the threat of
which at moments appalled him. Alan winced as there came before him in
the darkness of the street the vision of Constance in Spearman's arms
and of the kiss that he had seen that afternoon.

He staggered, slipped, fell suddenly forward upon his knees under a
stunning, crushing blow upon his head from behind. Thought,
consciousness almost lost, he struggled, twisting himself about to
grasp at his assailant. He caught the man's clothing, trying to drag
himself up; fighting blindly, dazedly, unable to see or think, he
shouted aloud and then again, aloud. He seemed in the distance to hear
answering cries; but the weight and strength of the other was bearing
him down again to his knees; he tried to slip aside from it, to rise.
Then another blow, crushing and sickening, descended on his head; even
hearing left him and, unconscious, he fell forward on to the snow and
lay still.

CHAPTER X

A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE

"The name seems like Sherrill," the interne agreed. "He said it before
when we had him on the table up-stairs; and he has said it now twice
distinctly--Sherrill."

"His name, do you think?"

"I shouldn't say so; he seems trying to speak to some one named