e
for them to do except to pay the miller.

"To-morrow," said Quarrier, rising to go. It was on the edge of Plank's
lips to say, "to-day!"--but he was silent, knowing that Harrington would
speak for him. And the old man did, without words, turning his iron
visage on Quarrier with the silent dignity of despair. But Quarrier
coldly demanded a day before they reckoned with Plank. And Plank,
profoundly disturbed, shrugged his massive shoulders in contemptuous
assent.

So Quarrier and Harrington went away--the younger partner taking leave
of the older with a sneer for an outworn prop which no man could ever
again have use for. Old and beaten--that was all Harrington now stood
for in Quarrier's eyes. Never a thought of the past undaunted courage,
never a memory of the old victories which had made the Quarrier fortune
possible--only contempt for age, a sneer for the mind and body that
had failed at last. The old robber was done for, his armour rotten, his
buckler broken, his sword blade rusted to the core. The least of his
victims might now finish him with a club where he swayed in his loosened
saddle, or leave him to that horseman on the pale horse watching him
yonder on the horizon.

For now, whether Harrington lived or died, he must be counted as nothing
in this new struggle darkly outlining its initial strategy in Quarrier's
brain. What was coming was coming between himself and Plank alone; and
whatever the result--whether an armed truce leaving affairs indefinitely
in statu quo, or the other alternative, an alliance with Plank, leaving
Harrington like a king in his mail, propped upon his throne, dead eyes
doubly darkened under the closed helmet--the result must be attained
swiftly, with secrecy, and with the aid of no man. For he did not count
Mortimer a man.

So Quarrier's thin lips twitched and the glimmer of teeth showed
under the silky beard as he listened without comment to the old
man's hesitating words--a tremulous suggestion for a conference that
evening--and he said again, "to-morrow," and left him there alone,
groping with uncertain hands toward the door of the hired coupe which
had brought him to the place of his earthly downfall; the place where
he had met his own weird face to face--the wraith that bore the mask of
Plank.

Quarrier, brooding sullenly in his Mercedes, was already far up town on
his way to Major Belwether's house.

At the door, Sylvia's maid received him smilingly, saying that her
mist