onel Bludyer had been
discovered in the snow in an old disused gravel-pit not far from the
house.

* * * * *

A year afterward I married Agnes Maryon; and, if all that I had seen and
heard upon that 3d of February was not merely the invention of a fevered
brain, the debt of honor was at last discharged, for I, the nephew of
the murdered Geoffrey Ringwood, became the owner of The Mere.

DEVEREUX'S DREAM.

I give you this story only at second-hand; but you have it in
substance--and he wasted few words over it--as Paul Devereux told it me.

It was not the only queer story he could have told about himself if he
had chosen, by a good many, I should say. Paul's life had been an
eminently unconventional one: the man's face certified to that--hard,
bronzed, war-worn, seamed and scarred with strange battle-marks--the
face of a man who had dared and done most things.

It was not his custom to speak much of what he had done, however.
Probably only because he and I were little likely to meet again that he
told me this I am free to tell you now.

We had come across one another for the first time for years that
afternoon on the Italian Boulevart. Paul had landed a couple of weeks
previously at Marseilles from a long yacht-cruise in southern waters,
the monotony of which we heard had been agreeably diversified by a
little pirate-hunting and slaver-chasing--the evil tongues called it
piracy and slave-running; and certainly Devereux was quite equal to
either _metier_; and he was about starting on a promising little
filibustering expedition across the Atlantic, where the chances were he
would be shot, and the certainty was that he would be starved. So
perhaps he felt inclined to be a trifle more communicative than usual,
as we sat late that night over a blazing pyre of logs and in a cloud of
Cavendish. At all events he was, and after this fashion.

I forget now exactly how the subject was led up to. Expression of some
philosophic incredulity on my part regarding certain matters, followed
by a ten-minutes' silence on his side pregnant with unwonted words to
come--that was it, perhaps. At last he said, more to himself, it seemed,
than to me:

"'Such stuff as dreams are made of.' Well, who knows? You're a Sadducee,
Bertie; you call this sort of thing, politely, indigestion. Perhaps
you're right. But yet I had a queer dream once."

"Not unlikely," I assented.

"You're wrong; I never dream,