half hidden by a small belt of brushwood, a group of
officers, and I could hear them laughing.

'Is that an Indian cry, Springfield?' some one said.

'Yes, there's a legend that it is always heard the night before there's
a kind of vendetta.'

Springfield's voice reached us quite clearly, and I looked
instinctively towards Paul Edgecumbe.

'I know that voice! I know it!' and the intensity of his feeling was
manifested in every word he spoke.

'Silence,' I whispered, 'and come with me, quickly!'

I drew him to a spot from which, without being observed, he could see
Springfield's face.

'That is he, _that's_ he,' he whispered hoarsely. 'I know him,--I know
him!'

'Who is he?' I asked.

'I--oh!--no,--I don't know.'

From pain, almost amounting to agony, the expression on his face had
changed to that of intense loathing, of infinite contempt.

'Let's get away,' he said; 'this air is polluted.'

A few minutes later, we had come to the rest-house where I had been
brought after my shaking-up, and I saw that the letters had come.

'Wait a minute,' I said. 'I want to hear the end of your story.'

There was only one letter for me, and I saw at a glance that it had
come from Lorna Bolivick. It was a long, newsy epistle, only one part
of which I need quote here. It referred to Paul Edgecumbe's photograph.

'Thank you,' she wrote, 'for sending me that picture of your protege.
What a strange-looking man! I don't think I ever saw a face quite like
it before, and hasn't he wonderful eyes! I felt, even while looking at
it, that he was reading my very soul. I am sure he has had wonderful
experiences, and has seen things undreamed of by such as I. I had a
kind of feeling, when I asked you for it, that I might have met him, or
seen him somewhere; but I never have. His face is like no other I have
ever seen, although, in spite of its strangeness, it is wonderfully
striking. If ever you have a chance, you must bring him to see me. I
am sure I should like to talk to him. A man who has a face like that
couldn't help being interesting.'

Here was the final blow which shattered all my suspicions. In spite of
repeated assurances to the contrary, I retained the impression that
Paul Edgecumbe and Maurice St. Mabyn were the same person. Now I knew
that it was impossible. Lorna Bolivick's testimony was final, all the
more final because she had no thought of what was in my own mind.

And yet I knew that Paul Edgecu