e quickest. He
sat there at the table, a lieutenant; a boy of twenty-four faced him,
and the boy was a captain and his superior.

It was to the Lieutenant, however, that Wyley resumed his discourse.

"The length of time lost is proportionate to the severity of the
concussion. It may be only an hour; I have known it to be a day." He
leaned back in his chair and smiled. "A strange question that for a
man to ask himself--What did he do during those hours?--a question to
appal him."

Scrope chose a card from his hand and played it. Without looking up
from the table, he asked: "To appal him? Why?"

"Because the question would be not so much what did he do, as what may
he not have done. A man rides through life insecurely seated on his
passions. Within a few hours the most honest man may commit a damnable
crime, a damnable dishonour."

Scrope looked quietly at the Surgeon to read the intention of his
words. Then: "I suppose so," he said carelessly. "But do you think
that question would press?"

"Why not?" asked Wyley.

Scrope shrugged his shoulders. "I should need an example before I
believed you."

The example was at the door. The corporal of the guard at the
Catherine Port knocked and was admitted. He told his story to Major
Shackleton, and as he told it the two officers lounged back into the
room from the balcony, and the other who was dozing against the wall
brought the legs of his chair with a bang to the floor and woke up.

It appeared that a sentry at the stockade outside the Catherine Port
had suddenly noticed a flutter of white on the ground a few yards
from the stockade. He watched this white object, and it moved. He
challenged it, and was answered by a whispered prayer for admission in
the English tongue and in an English voice. The sentry demanded the
password, and received as a reply, "Inchiquin. It is the last password
I have knowledge of. Let me in! Let me in!"

The sentry called the corporal, the corporal admitted the fugitive and
brought him to the Main-Guard. He was now in the guard-room below.

"You did well," said the Major. "The man has come from the Moorish
lines, and may have news which will profit us in the morning. Let
him up!" and as the corporal retired, "'Inchiquin,'" he repeated
thoughtfully: "I cannot call to mind that password."

Now Wyley had noticed that when the corporal first mentioned the word,
Scrope, who was looking over his cards, had dropped one on the table
as though hi