e days yet.' 'No one will come ashore for you,' he said
pointedly. I told him that he was making a great mistake in the attitude
he was taking toward the heirs, but he coolly informed me that it was
best to eradicate all danger of the plague by destroying the germs, so
to speak. He agreed with me that you have no chance in the courts, but
maintains that you'll keep up the fight as long as you live, so you
might just as well die to suit his convenience. I also made the
interesting discovery that suits have already been brought in England to
break the will on the grounds of insanity."

"But what good will that do us if we are to die here?" exclaimed Bobby
Browne.

"None whatsoever," said Chase calmly. "You must admit, however, that you
exhibited signs of hereditary insanity by coming here in the first
place. I'm beginning to believe that there's a streak of it in my
family, too."

"And you--you saw him killed?" asked the Princess in an awed voice, low
and full of horror.

"Yes. I could not avoid it."

"They killed him on your--on your--" she could not complete the
sentence, but shuddered expressively.

"Yes. He deserved death, Princess. I am more or less like the Moslem in
one respect. I might excuse a thief or a murderer, but I have no pity
for a traitor."

"You saw him killed," she said in the same awed voice, involuntarily
drawing away from him.

"Yes," he said, "and you would have seen him killed, too, if you had
gone down with me to appear against him."

She looked up quickly and then thanked him, almost in a whisper.

CHAPTER XXVIII

CENTURIES TO FORGET

"My lord," said Saunders the next day, appearing before his lordship
after an agitated hour of preparation, "it's come to a point where
something's got to be done." He got that far and then turned quite
purple; his collar seemed to be choking him.

"Quite right, Saunders," said Deppingham, replacing his eyeglass
nervously, "but who's going to do it and what is there to be done?"

"I'm--er--afraid you don't quite understand, sir," mumbled the little
solicitor, glancing uneasily over his shoulder. "If what Mr. Chase says
is true, we've got a precious short time to live. Well, we've--we've
concluded to get all we can out of the time that's left, my lord."

"I see," said the other, but he did not see.

"So I've come to ask if it will be all right with you and her ladyship,
sir. We don't want to do anything that would seem forward and out of