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If a man ever wished himself well out of a situation in which, as it happened, his own prowess had landed him, it was Ewen Cameron of Ardroy when that announcement fell upon his ears. What fatality had induced him to succour and be brought home by the father of the very man whom he had treated so scurvily two months ago, and who had sworn to be revenged upon him? Obviously the wisest course was to excuse himself and withdraw before he could meet that injured young gentleman.

But already Lord Stowe was motioning him with a courteous gesture to ascend the imposing staircase. Without great incivility he could not withdraw now, nor, it seemed to him, without great cowardice to boot. And if he must encounter Lord Aveling again, this place and these circumstances were certainly more favourable than any which he could have devised for himself. Moreover, Aveling might not be in London at this moment. Above all, Ewen’s was a stubborn courage as well as, on occasions, a hot-brained one; he never relished running away. He therefore went on up the wide, shallow staircase, and was looked down upon with haughty disapproval by Aveling’s ancestors.

Outside a door the Earl paused. “May I know the name of my preserver?”

“I beg your pardon, my lord,” returned Ewen. “I forgot that I had not made myself known to you. My name is Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, at your service.”

Now, what had Lord Stowe heard of Ewen Cameron of Ardroy? If anything at all, nothing of good, that was certain. The bearer of that name lifted his head with a touch of defiance, for its utterance had certainly brought about a change in his host’s expression.

“A kinsman of the unfortunate Doctor Cameron’s, perhaps?” he inquired.

“Yes. He is my cousin—and my friend,” answered Ewen uncompromisingly.

“Ah,” observed Lord Stowe with a not unsympathetic intonation, “a sad business, his! But come, Mr. Cameron.” And, opening the heavy inlaid door, he ushered him into an enormous room of green and gold, where every candle round the painted walls burned, but burned low, and where the disposition of the furniture spoke of a gathering now dispersed. But the most important person still remained. On a sofa, in an attitude of incomparable grace, languor and assurance, with a little book poised lazily between her long fingers, half-sat, half-reclined the most beautiful woman whom Ewen had ever seen. And then only, in the suddenness of these events and introductions, did he realise that he was in the presence of Keith Windham’s mother as well as of Lord Aveling’s.

As the door shut Lady Stowe half-turned her head, and said in silver tones, “You are returned at last, my lord. Do I see that you bring a guest?”

“I do, my love,” replied her husband, “and one to whom we owe a very great debt indeed.” And Ewen was led forward across the acres of carpet to that gilt sofa, and kissed the cool, fragrant hand extended to him, but faintly conscious of embarrassment at the praises of his courage which the Earl was pouring forth, and with all thoughts of an avenging Aveling dissipated. It was of Lady Stowe’s elder son, his dead friend, whom he thought as he looked at that proud and lovely face. Not that there was any likeness. But surely this could not have been Keith Windham’s mother; she seemed no older, at least by candle-light, than he when he died seven years ago!

Then Ewen found himself in a chair, with the Countess saying flattering things to him, rallying him gently, too, in those seductive tones.

“You are a Scot, sir, a kinsman of that unfortunate gentleman who is in all our minds just now, and yet you come to the rescue of an Englishman and a Whig!”

“It was an Englishman and a Whig, Lady Stowe, who once saved me from a far greater danger,” replied Ewen. He said it of set purpose, for he wished to discover if she knew what her elder son had been to him.

Apparently Lady Stowe did not, nor was she curious to learn to what he referred, for she merely said: “Indeed; that is gratifying!” and, in fact, before the subject could be enlarged upon from either side, Lord Stowe was remarking to the guest by way of conversation suitable to his nationality, “My son has recently been visiting Scotland for the first time.”

The menace of Aveling returned to Ewen’s memory. By the tense it seemed as if that young gentleman had now returned from the North.

“You are from the Highlands, I suppose, Mr. Cameron,” went on the Earl pleasantly. “My son visited them also for a short while, going to Dunstaffnage Castle in Lorne. Do you happen to know it?”

Ewen intimated that he did, from the outside. And now a voice was crying out to him to end the difficult situation in which he stood (though neither his host nor his hostess was aware of it) by offering of his own will some explanation of the episode at Dalmally. For, with this mention of Lord Aveling in the Highlands, not to acknowledge that they had made each other’s acquaintance there seemed so unnatural and secretive as to throw an even worse light upon his behaviour towards him. At the very least it made him appear ashamed of it. He pulled himself together for the plunge.

“I must tell you, my lord——” he was beginning, when his voice was withered on his lips by an extraordinary grating, screeching sound which, without warning, rent the air of the great drawing-room. Startled as at some supernatural intervention, Ewen glanced hastily round in search of its source.

“Do not be alarmed, Mr. Cameron,” came Lady Stowe’s cool tones through the disturbance. “ ’Tis only that my macaw has waked up . . . but I apologise for the noise he makes.”

And then the Highlander beheld, in a corner not very far away, a gilded cage, and therein a large bird of the most gorgeous plumage, with a formidable curved beak and a tail of fire and azure, who was pouring forth what sounded like a stream of imprecations.

“For Heaven’s sake!” cried the Earl, jumping to his feet. “I thought you had given up having that creature in this room, my lady! Is there no means to make him stop?” For the deafening scolding went on without intermission.

Lady Stowe leant forward. “If you will have the goodness to cover him up,” she said with complete calm, “he will be quiet.”

Both men looked round helplessly for something with which to carry out this suggestion; Ewen, too, had got to his feet. “Cover him up with what, pray?” asked Lord Stowe indignantly. “Good Gad, this is insupportable!” And, slightly red in the face, he tugged at the nearest bell-pull. Meanwhile the infernal screeching continued unceasingly, except for one short moment when the macaw made a vicious grab at the Earl’s lace-bordered handkerchief, with which he was exasperatedly flapping the bars of the cage in an endeavour to silence its inmate.

A footman appeared. “Remove this bird at once!” shouted his master angrily. (He was obliged to shout.) The man hesitated.

“Montezuma will bite him, and he knows it,” observed Lady Stowe, raising her voice but slightly. “Send Sambo, John.”

The man bowed and withdrew with alacrity. “This is worse than footpads!” declared the Earl, with his hands to his ears. “I cannot sufficiently apologise, Mr. Cameron!”—he had almost to bawl the words. “Really, my lady, if I could wring your pet’s neck without getting bitten, I would!”

“I know it, my love,” returned her ladyship, with her slow, charming smile. “And so, I am sure, would poor Mr. Cameron.”

Then black Sambo appeared in his scarlet turban and jutting white plume. Smiling broadly, he strutted off with the great gilt cage, whose occupant continued to scream, but made no onslaught upon those dusky fingers.

“I really cannot sufficiently apologise,” began the Earl once more to his half-deafened guest, “for my wife’s fancy——”

“What?” called a young, laughing voice from the door, “has Montezuma been misbehaving again?” Someone had come in just as the exiled and vociferating fowl was borne out. “But for that noise, I had thought you gone to bed by this time. You promised, my dear mother, that he——” But here the speaker realised that there was a stranger in his family circle, pulled out a handkerchief, flicked some probably imaginary grains of powder off his gleaming coat, and advanced across the wilderness of carpet to the three by the sofa, a veritable Prince Charming in peach-coloured satin and a deal of lace. And Ewen, watching his fate advance upon him in the person of this smiling and elegant young man, silently cursed the departed macaw with a mortification a thousand times deeper than the Earl’s. But for that ridiculous contretemps he might either have made his confession, or escaped meeting his late victim, or both.

But there was no escape now. Lord Aveling, still smiling, got within a yard or two of the group when he saw who the stranger was. He stopped; the smile died, his face froze, and the hand with the filmy handkerchief fell, gripping the Mechlin.

Lord Stowe must have been blind had he not noticed the startling change on the countenance of his heir. But, if not blind, he was possibly short-sighted, for he did not by any means appear to read its full significance.

“You are surprised to see a guest here so late, Aveling, I perceive,” he said mildly, “but you will be still more surprised when you learn the reason for this gentleman’s presence to-night.”

“I’ve no doubt at all that I shall,” said Lord Aveling under his breath. He had never removed his eyes from Ewen; they seemed to say, almost as clear as speech, “You cannot have had the insolence to make your way in here to apologise!”

“I was this evening,” went on Lord Stowe with empressement, “the victim of a murderous attack—perhaps you have already heard of it from the servants.”

“An attack!” repeated Lord Aveling, at last turning his gaze upon his parent. “On whose part—this gentleman’s?”

“Good Gad, Aveling, what can you be thinking of?” exclaimed his father, shocked. “This gentleman, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy, had the great goodness to risk his own person for mine—Mr. Cameron, this is my son, Lord Aveling.”

Ewen bowed, not very deeply.

“An introduction is not necessary, my lord,” observed Lord Aveling. “We met not long ago in Scotland, Mr. Cameron and I.” And with that he turned his back carelessly on the guest and went over to the sofa to speak to his mother.

Lord Stowe looked as if he could hardly believe his ears or eyes, partly at this announcement, partly at the sight of his son’s uncivil behaviour. “You met in Scotland!” he repeated after a moment, in tones of amazement.

“I was just on the point of making that fact known to your lordship,” said Ewen, “when the bird interrupted me.” He was white with chagrin. “Lord Aveling and I did, indeed, meet as he was returning from Dunstaffnage Castle.”

“Yes,” cut in the young man, turning round again, “and owing to a difficulty over posthorses I had the privilege—as I see I must now consider it—of offering Mr. Cameron a seat in my chaise as far as Dalmally.”

“My dear Aveling, why did you not tell us this before?” asked Lady Stowe.

“How could I guess that it would be of any interest to you to learn that I gave a lift to a stranger in the wilds of Scotland? It would have seemed, my dear mother, to be laying too much stress upon a deed of charity. Moreover, I can affirm, with my hand upon my heart, that Mr. Cameron of Ardroy is the last person in the world whom I expected to find in this house.”

His manner, if controlled, was patently full of some ironical meaning which, though clear enough to Ardroy, was puzzling to his parents, who, having no clue to it, may have received the impression that he was a trifle the worse for wine. The Countess said, with a smiling authority, “Then it behoves you all the more, Francis, to hear how Mr. Cameron beat off the footpads who assailed your father’s chair this evening at the corner of the square.”

“English footpads?” queried the young man, and he looked meaningly for an instant at the rescuer.

“Why, what else?” asked his father. “Two footpads armed with cudgels. I had the narrowest escape of being robbed, if not of being murdered.”

“I can quite believe that you had, sir,” observed Lord Aveling, looking at Ewen again.

But Ewen had by now resolved that he was not going to suffer these stabs any longer, nor was he disposed to hear the account of his prowess given a second time, and to the mocking accompaniment which he knew that it would receive. He therefore took advantage of the check to Lord Stowe’s imminent narrative, brought about by these (to him) unintelligible remarks of his son’s, firmly to excuse himself on the score of the lateness of the hour. Either Lord Aveling would allow him to leave the house without further words, or he would not; in any case, it was probable that he desired such words to take place without witnesses. The fact that he had not previously mentioned to his family their encounter and its disastrous end seemed to point to the fact that his young pride had been too bitterly wounded for him to speak of it, even in the hope of obtaining revenge. It might be very different now that his enemy was delivered so neatly into his hands.

“You must promise to visit us again, Mr. Cameron,” said the Countess with the utmost graciousness, and Lord Stowe said the same, adding that if there were any way in which he could serve him he had but to name it. Ewen thought rather sardonically how surprised the Earl would be if he responded by a request that he should prevent his son from landing him in Newgate, but he merely murmured polite thanks as the Earl conducted him to the door of the drawing-room. It seemed as though he were going to pay his rescuer the further compliment of descending the stairs with him, but in this design he had reckoned without his son, who, as Ewen was perfectly aware, had followed behind them, awaiting his opportunity.

“I will escort Mr. Cameron down the stairs, my lord,” he said easily, slipping in front of his father. “You must remember that we are old acquaintances.”

He sounded perfectly civil and pleasant now, and after a barely perceptible hesitation the Earl relinquished the guest to his care, shook hands with great warmth, repeating his assurance of undying gratitude and a perpetual warm welcome at Stowe House. Then the door closed, and Ewen and Lord Aveling were alone together.

“Will you come into the library downstairs?” asked the young man, somewhat in the tone he might have used to a mason come about repairs, and with as little apparent doubt of the response.

“Yes,” answered Ardroy with equal coldness, “I will,” and followed him down the great staircase.

In the marble-pillared hall a footman stepped forward. “Take lights into the library,” commanded the young lord, and while he and Ewen waited for this to be done, without speaking, or even looking at each other, Ewen, gazing up at a portrait of some judicial ancestor in wig and ermine (not inappropriate to the present circumstances) thought, ‘What is to prevent my opening the door into the square and leaving the house?’ What indeed? Something much stronger than the desire to do so.

But in another moment the lackey was preceding them with a couple of branched candlesticks into a room lined with books. He made as though to light the sconces too, but Lord Aveling checked him impatiently, and the man merely set the lights on the big, polished table in the centre and withdrew. The son of the house waited until his footsteps had died away on the marble outside.

“Now, Mr. Cameron!” he said.

* * * * *

Ewen had always known that to come to London was to invite the Fates to present him with the reckoning for his behaviour at Dalmally. Well, if it had to be, it was preferable to have it presented by the victim himself rather than by some emissary of the justice which he had invoked. And, however this unpleasant interview was to end, he might perhaps during its course succeed in convincing Lord Aveling of the sincerity of his regrets for that lamentable episode.

“I suppose, my lord,” he now answered gravely, “that you must say what you please to me. I admit that I have little right to resent it.”

The admission, unfortunately, appeared but to inflame the young nobleman the more. “You are vastly kind, Mr. Cameron, upon my soul! You lay aside resentment, forsooth! I fear I cannot rise to that height, and let me tell you, therefore, that what I find almost more blackguardly than your infamous conduct at Dalmally is the coup you have brought off to-night, in——”

“The coup I have brought off!” exclaimed Ewen in bewilderment. “My lord, what——”

Aveling swept on “—in forcing an entrance to this house, and ingratiating yourself with my parents, having put my father under a fancied obligation by a trick so transparent that, if he were not the most good-natured man alive, he would have seen through it at once.”

At this totally unexpected interpretation of the sedan-chair incident a good deal of Ewen’s coolness left him.

“You cannot really think that the attack on Lord Stowe was planned—that I was responsible for it!”

“How else am I to account for your being there so pat?” inquired the young man. “You hired the ruffians and then came in as a deliverer. It has been done before now. And having succeeded in laying Lord Stowe under an obligation you know that I cannot well——” He broke off, his rage getting the better of him. “But the insolence, the inexpressible insolence of your daring to enter this house after what has happened!”

“Since I did not plan the attack, Lord Aveling,” said Ewen firmly, “I had no notion whom I was rescuing. Nor did Lord Stowe tell me his name until he was on the point of taking me upstairs. It was too late to withdraw then.”

“As I am henceforward unable to believe a word that you say, sir,” retorted the young man, “it is of small use your pretending ignorance of my father’s identity.”

“Yet perhaps you are still able to recognise logic when you hear it,” rejoined Ewen with some sharpness, his own temper beginning to stir. “Had I known that the gentleman in the sedan-chair was Lord Stowe—which, if I had planned the attack, I must have known—the merest prudence would have kept me from entering a house in which I was so like to meet you.”

“Yes,” said Aveling with a bitter little smile, “you would have done better to part sooner from my father after this pretended rescue!”

“And yet,” said the Highlander, looking at him with a touch of wistfulness in his level gaze, “as chance has brought us together again, is it too much to hope, my lord, that you will at least endeavour to accept my most sincere and humble apologies for what my great necessity forced me to do that evening?”

“Apologies?” said Viscount Aveling. “No, by heaven, there are no apologies humble enough for what you did!”

“Then I am ready to give you satisfaction in the way usual between gentlemen,” said Ewen gravely.

The young man shook his powdered head. “Between gentlemen, yes. But a gentleman does not accept satisfaction of that kind from a highwayman; he has him punished, as I swore I would you. But you doubtless think that by gaining the Earl’s goodwill you have put that out of my power? Let me assure you, Mr. Highwayman, that you have not; the law is still the law!”

“I doubt if the law can touch me for what I did,” answered Ewen.

“Not for theft, horse-stealing and assault? Then this must indeed be an uncivilised country! . . . And behind those crimes remains always the question of how my brother really met his end.”

“That I have already told you, Lord Aveling.”

“Yes; and I was fool enough to believe you! I am wiser now; I know of what you are capable, Mr. Ewen Cameron!”

Ewen turned away from the furious young man, who still maintained his position by the door. He was at a loss what to do next. There was no common ground on which they could meet, though once there had seemed so much; but he himself had shorn it away. One of the candles in the massive silver-branched candlesticks which had been deposited upon the table was guttering badly, and, in the strange way in which a portion of the mind will attend to trifles at moments of crisis, he took up the snuffers which lay there in readiness and mended the wick with scarcely the least consciousness of what he was doing.

His action had an unexpected result. Lord Aveling started a few paces forward, pointing at the hand which had performed this service. “And you still have the effrontery to wear the ring which you took from poor Keith!”

Ewen laid down the snuffers. “I have the effrontery, since you call it so, to wear the ring he gave me; and I shall wear it until my own dying day.”

The words, though they were very quietly uttered, rang like a challenge; and as a challenge the young man took them up.

“Will you?” he asked. “I think not. Here in this house, above all, I have no liking to see my poor brother’s property on your finger. You will kindly surrender it to his family.”

“Although I take you to be jesting, my lord,” began Ewen very coldly.

“Jesting!” flashed out Aveling. “No, by God! You will give me back Keith Windham’s signet ring, or——”

“Or?” questioned Ewen.

“Or I’ll have it taken from you by the lackeys!”

“Then you will hardly be in a position to throw my theft of your property in my face!” retorted Ardroy.

“I had not stolen my pistols and my horse,” riposted Lord Aveling.

“Nor have I stolen my friend’s ring. He gave it to me, and I give it up to nobody!”

“I dispute your statement!” cried the young man with passion. “You took that ring, whether you are guilty of my brother’s death or no. You are very capable of such an act; I know that now. Give it up to me, or I shall do what I say. My father has retired by now; do not imagine that he can protect you!”

“As to that, my lord, you must follow your own instincts,” said Ewen scornfully, “but you’ll not get my friend’s dying gift from me by threats—no, nor by performances either,” he added, as he saw Lord Aveling move towards the bell-pull.

“Yes, you think they are but threats, and that you can treat them with contempt,” said the young man between his teeth. “I’ll show you in one moment that they are not! I have only to pull this bell, and in two or three minutes a so-called Highland gentleman will go sprawling down the steps of Stowe House. You will not be able to bully half-a-dozen footmen as you bullied me!”

Ewen stood perfectly motionless, but he had paled. It was quite true that this irate, beautifully dressed young man had the power to carry out this new threat. Of the two he fancied he would almost have preferred the menace which Lord Aveling had uttered at Dalmally, that he would bring his assailant to Newgate. But he put the hand with the ring into his breast and said again, “I can only repeat that you must follow your instincts, my lord. I follow mine; and you do not get this ring from me unless you take it by force!”

Aveling put his hand to the embroidered Chinese bell-pull hanging by the mantelpiece. Ewen looked at him. It needed a great effort of self-control on his part not to seize the young man and tear it out of his hand before he pulled it, as he could easily have done. And, in view of events in the bedroom at Dalmally, still only too fresh in his mind, this abstention evidently struck the angry Aveling as strange.

“I observe,” he said tauntingly, still holding the strip of silk, “that you are not so ready to assault me now, Mr. Cameron, when you know that you would instantly have to pay for it!”

“It was in someone else’s interests that I used violence on you then, my lord. I have no one else’s to serve now,” said Ewen sadly.

Lord Aveling dropped the bell-pull. “You mean Doctor Cameron. No, you did not benefit him much. You were too late, I imagine.”

“I was just too late.”

“And if you had not been,” remarked the young man, “I should not, perhaps, have heard him sentenced this morning.”

Ewen gave a little exclamation, “You were at the King’s Bench this morning, my lord? You were there—you heard it all? But they cannot, they cannot, mean to carry out so cruel and iniquitous a sentence!”

Suddenly and oddly reflective, Lord Aveling gazed at him, the tassel of the abandoned bell-pull still moving slowly to and fro across the wall. “I would have given wellnigh all I possess to be in your place, my lord,” went on Ardroy, his own dangerous and unpleasant situation clean forgotten, “to see how he looked . . . though I have heard how well he bore himself. But if the judges knew what manner of man he was, how generous, how kind, how humane, they would not have condemned him on that seven years’ old attainder.”

Francis Delahaye, Lord Aveling, was a very young man, and he had also been in an extreme of justifiable rage. But even that fury, now past its high-water mark, had not entirely swamped his native intelligence and sensitiveness, which were above the ordinary. He continued to look at Ewen without saying anything, as one in the grip of a perfectly new idea. Then, instead of putting his hand again to the bell-pull, he slowly walked away from its neighbourhood with his head bent, leaving the door unguarded and his threat unfulfilled.

But Ewen neither took advantage of these facts nor looked to see what his adversary was doing. The full wretchedness of the morning was back upon him; Archie had only three weeks to live. And if only he had not made an enemy of this young man, Lord Stowe, so grateful to his rescuer, might have been induced to use his influence on Archie’s behalf. But it was hopeless to think of that now.

It was at this moment, during the silence which had fallen, that steps which sounded too authoritative to be those of a servant could be heard approaching along the marble corridor outside. Lord Aveling, at any rate, could assign them to their owner, for he came back from whatever portion of the library he had wandered to, murmuring with a frown, “My father!” On that the door opened, and the Earl came in. His expression was perturbed.

“I waited for your reappearance, Aveling,” he said to his son; “then I was informed that Mr. Cameron had not left the house, and that you were both closeted in here. And your manner to him had been so strange that I decided to come in person to find out what was amiss.”

There was dignity about Lord Stowe now; he was no longer a somewhat fussy little gentleman deafened by a macaw, but a nobleman of position. His son seemed undecided whether to speak or no. Ewen spoke.

“An explanation is certainly owing to you, my lord, and by me rather than by Lord Aveling. His manner to me a while ago was, I regret to say, quite justified by something which occurred between us in Scotland.”

“And which, if you please,” put in Aveling like lightning, “I wish to remain between us, Mr. Cameron.”

“That is very unfortunate,” observed Lord Stowe gravely, looking from one to the other. “As you know, I am under a great obligation to Mr. Cameron.”

“From his past experience of me, my lord, Lord Aveling doubts that,” observed Ewen quietly.

“Doubts it! Good Gad, Aveling, are you suggesting that I was drunk or dreaming this evening?”

“No, my lord,” said his son slowly. He was examining his ruffles with some absorption. “Since I gave voice to my doubt, I have . . . revised my opinion. I do not question your very real debt to Mr. Cameron.”

“I should hope not,” said the Earl with some severity. “And, as I said before, I am extremely anxious to repay it. If I can do this by composing the difference which has arisen between you——”

“No, you can’t do that, my dear father,” said the young man with vivacity. “Leave that out of the question now, if you will, and ask Mr. Cameron in what way you can best repay that debt. I believe I could give a very good guess at what he will reply.”

Ewen gave a start and looked at the speaker, upon whose lips hung something like a smile. How did Lord Aveling know—or did he not know? Such intuition savoured almost of the supernatural.

“Well, Mr. Cameron, what is it?” inquired the Earl. “In what can I attempt to serve you? You have but to name the matter.”

But Ewen was so bewildered at this volte-face in his enemy, not to mention his uncanny perspicacity, that he remained momentarily tongue-tied.

“Mr. Cameron’s request is not, I believe, for himself at all,” said Lord Aveling softly. “There is a person upon whose behalf he has done and risked a good deal. I think he wishes, if possible, to enlist you on the same side.”

“I take it,” said his father, “that you are referring to the unfortunate gentleman, Mr. Cameron’s kinsman, who was to-day condemned to death. Am I right, Mr. Cameron?”

Ewen bent his head. “I ask too much, perhaps, my lord.” He lifted it again, and speech came to him, and he pleaded earnestly for commutation of the sentence, almost as though the decision had lain in Lord Stowe’s hands. “And surely, my lord,” he finished, “clemency in this case must prove to the advantage, not to the disadvantage, of the Government.”

The Earl had listened with courtesy and attention. “I will certainly think over what you have said, Mr. Cameron,” he promised, “and if I can convince myself, from what I hear elsewhere, that a recommendation to mercy is advisable, I will take steps in the proper quarters. Come and see me again to-morrow afternoon, if you will give yourself the trouble.—Aveling, you wish me, I gather, to leave you to settle your own difference with Mr. Cameron?”

“If you please, my lord.” He smiled a little, and opened the door for his father to pass out.

“Why did you do that? How, in God’s name, did you know?” cried Ewen directly it was shut again.

The dark mahogany panels behind him threw up Lord Aveling’s slight, shimmering figure. “It was not so difficult to read your mind, Mr. Cameron. I wish I could think that among my friends I numbered one with . . . the same notions that you have. As to my own mind . . . well, perhaps Doctor Cameron made an impression on me this morning other than I had expected, so that, to tell truth, I half-wished that you had been in time with the information which you stole from me.”

Ewen sat down at the table and took his head between his fists. Once more Keith Windham’s ring glittered in the candle-light.

“We heard a rumour in Edinburgh,” went on Aveling, “that there was one man and one man only with Doctor Cameron when he was taken, and that he resisted desperately, and was left behind too badly hurt to be taken away by the soldiers. I begin to have a suspicion who that man was . . .”

Ewen was silent.

“—Although you said that you arrived too late. . . . But I do not wish to press you to incriminate yourself.”

“Yes, you have enough against me without seeking any more,” answered Ardroy without raising his head.

“I think that I have wiped out that score,” said Aveling reflectively. “Indeed, that I have overpaid it.” He was silent for a second or two, and then went on with a very young eagerness, “Mr. Cameron, I am going to ask a favour of you, which may not displease you either. Will you, as a matter of form, cross swords with me—over the table if you prefer it—so that we may each feel that we have offered satisfaction to the other? I was too angry to know what I was saying when I refused your offer of it just now. See, I will shift the candlesticks a little. Will you do it?”

Ewen got up, rather moved. “I shall be very glad to do it, my lord.” He drew his plain steel-hilted sword; out came the young man’s elegant damascened weapon; the glittering blades went up to the salute, and then kissed for a second above the mahogany.

“Thank you, sir,” said Aveling, stepping back with a bow, and sheathing again. “Will you forgive me now for what I said about my brother? I am well content that you should keep his ring, and I am sure that the giver would have been pleased that you refused to surrender it, even to save yourself from what I had the bad taste to threaten you with.”

Sword in hand, Ewen bowed; words, somehow, would not come. So much that was racking had happened this day, and he was not long over a convalescence. The young, delicate face looking gravely and rather sweetly at him across the table swam for a second in the candle-light, and when he tried to return his sword to the scabbard he fumbled over the process.

“I can see that you are much fatigued, Mr. Cameron,” said Lord Aveling, coming round the table. “Will you take a glass of wine with me before you go?”