nd come away, girl!"

"When I have let him out, I will," she answered, her eyes glowing
sombrely as she nursed her wrist. In her, too, the old Adam had been
raised.

"Give me the key!" he said for the last time.

"I will not," she said. "And if I did--" she continued, with a glance
at Payton that reminded the unhappy McMurrough that, with the secret
known, the key was no longer of use--"if I did, how would it serve
you?"

The McMurrough turned his rage upon the intruder. "Devil take you, what
business will it be of yours?" he cried. "Who are you to come between
us, eh?"

Payton bowed. "If I offend," he said airily, "I am entirely at your
service." He tapped the hilt of his sword. "You do not wear one, but I
have no doubt you can use one. I shall be happy to give you
satisfaction where and when you please. A time and place----"

But James did not stop to hear him out. He turned with an oath and a
snarl, and went off--went off in such a manner that Flavia could not
but see that the challenge was not to his taste. At another time she
would have blushed for him. But his brutal violence had done more
during the last ten minutes to depose his image from her heart than
years of neglect and rudeness.

Payton saw him go, and, blessing the good fortune which had put him in
a position to command the beauty's thanks, he turned to receive them.
But Flavia was not looking at him, was not thinking of him. She had put
the key in the lock and was trying to turn it. Her left wrist, however,
was too weak, and the right was so strained as to be useless. She
signed to him to turn the key, and he did so, and threw open the door,
wondering much who was there and what it was all about.

He did not at once recognise the man who, pale and haggard, a mere
ghost of himself, dragged himself up the three steps, and, exhausted by
the effort, leant against the doorpost. But when Colonel John spoke and
tried to thank the girl, he knew him.

He whistled. "You are Colonel Sullivan!" he said.

"The same, sir!" Colonel John murmured mechanically.

"Are you ill?"

"I am not well," the other replied with a sickly smile. The indignation
which he had felt during the contest between the girl and her brother
had been too much for his strength. "I shall be better presently," he
added. He closed his eyes.

"We should be getting him below," Flavia said in an undertone.

Payton looked from one to the other. He was in a fog. "Has he been here
long?