eyes and ever-varying colour. At the close
of the tale she spoke.

"I have heard of that wretched boy -- the tool and sport of the old
man's evil arts, the victim of the son's diabolic cruelty when he has no
other victim to torment. They keep him for days without food at times,
because they say that he responds better to their fiendish practices
when the body is well-nigh reduced to a shadow. Oh, I hear them talk! My
father is a dabbler in mystic arts. They are luring him on to think he
will one day learn the secret of the transmutation of metals, whilst I
know they do but seek to make of him a tool, to subdue his will, and to
do with him what they will. They will strive to practise next on me --
they have tried it already; but I resist them, and they are powerless,
though they hate me tenfold more for it, and I know that they are
reckoning on their revenge when I shall be a helpless victim in their
power. Art thou about to try to rescue the boy? That were, in truth, a
deed worth doing, though the world will never praise it; though it might
laugh to scorn a peril encountered for one so humble as a woodman's son.
But it would be a soul snatched from the peril of everlasting death, and
a body saved from the torments of a living hell!"

And then John spoke of the thoughts which had of late possessed them
both of that chivalry that was not like to win glory or renown, that
would not gain the praise of men, but would strive to do in the world a
work of love for the oppressed, the helpless, the lowly. And Joan's eyes
shone with the light of a great sympathy, as she turned her bright gaze
from one face to the other, till Raymond felt himself falling beneath a
spell the like of which he had never known before, and which suddenly
gave a new impulse to all his vague yearnings and imaginings, and a zest
to this adventure which was greater than any that had gone before.

Joan's ready woman's wit was soon at work planning and devising how the
deed might best be done.

"I can do this much to aid," she said. "A day will come ere long when
the two Sanghursts will come at nightfall to Woodcrych, to try, as they
have done before, some strange experiments in the laboratory my father
has had made for himself. We always know the day that this visit is to
be made, and I can make shift to let you know. They stay far into the
night, and only return to Basildene as the dawn breaks. That would be
the night to strive to find and rescue the boy