ewis. If the two are likely to suit each other I have your
authority to give him your message?"

"Certainly, my dear Wratislaw. I have all the confidence in the world
in your judgment. You will be back the day after to-morrow?"

"I shall only be out of the House one night, and I think the game worth
it. I need not tell you that I am infernally anxious both about the
business and my friend. It is just on the cards that one might be the
solution of the other."

"You understand everything?"

"Everything. I promise you I shall be exacting enough. And now I had
better be looking after my own work."

Beauregard stared after him as he went out of the room and remained for
a few minutes in deep thought. Then he deliberately wrote out a foreign
telegram form and rang the bell.

"I fancy I know the man," he said to himself. "He will go. Meantime I
can prepare things for his passage." The telegram was to the fugitive
Gribton at Florence, asking him to meet a certain Mr. Haystoun at the
Embassy in Paris within a week for the discussion of a particular
question.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BRINK OF THE RUBICON

The next evening Wratislaw drove in a hired dogcart up Glenavelin from
Gledsmuir just as a stormy autumn twilight was setting in over the bare
fields. A wild back-end had followed on the tracks of a marvellous
summer. Though it was still October the leaves lay heaped beneath the
hedgerows, the bracken had yellowed to a dismal hue of decay, and the
heather had turned from the purple of its flower to the grey-blue of its
passing. Rain had fallen, and the long road-side pools were fired by
the westering sun. Glenavelin looked crooked and fantastic in the
falling shadows, and two miles farther the high lights of Etterick rose
like a star in the bosom of the hills. Seen after many weeks' work in
the bustle and confinement of town, the solitary, shadow-haunted world
soothed and comforted.

He found Lewis in his room alone. The place was quite dark for no lamp
was lit, and only a merry fire showed the occupant. He welcomed his
friend with crazy vehemence, pushing him into a great armchair, offering
a dozen varieties of refreshment, and leaving the butler aghast with
contradictory messages about dinner.

"Oh, Tommy, upon my soul, it is good to see you here! I was getting as
dull as an owl."

"Are you alone?" Wratislaw asked.

"George is staying here, but he has gone over to Glenaller to a big
shoot. I didn't care much ab