God for that," said Rupert fervently as a picture presented
itself to him of his unsuspecting father trying in that lonely wood to
find and overtake the man whose murderous purpose was aimed at his life.

"What do you mean?" snapped the general. "And why have you made such a
spectacle of yourself with all that beard? Why, I didn't know you till
you spoke--there's Walter there. What makes him look like that?"

For Walter had just come out of the wood about fifty yards to their
right, and when he saw them talking together he understood at once that
in some way or another all his plans had failed.

He was looking at them through a gap in some undergrowth that hid most
of his body, but showed his head and shoulders plainly, and as he stood
there watching them his face was like a fiend's.

"Walter," the general shouted, and to his son Rupert he said: "The boy's
ill."

Walter moved forward from among the trees. He had a gun in his hand, and
he flung it forward as though preparing to fire, and at the same moment
Rupert Dunsmore drew from his pocket the pistol Deede Dawson had given
him and fired himself.

But at the very moment that he pulled the trigger the general struck up
his arm so that the bullet flew high and harmless through the tops of
the trees.

Walter stepped back again into the wood, and Rupert said:

"You don't know what you have done, father."

"You are mad, mad," the general gasped.

His face was very pale, and he trembled a little, for though he had
heard many bullets whistle by his ears, that had happened in action
against an enemy, and was altogether different from this. He put out his
hand in an attempt to take the pistol that Rupert easily evaded.

"Give it to me," he said. "I saved his life; you might have killed him."

"Yes, you saved him, father," Rupert muttered, thinking to himself that
the saving of Walter's life might well mean the loss of Ella's, since
very likely the failure of their plots would be at once attributed by
the conspirators to her. "Father, I never wrote that letter you say you
had. Walter forged it to get you here, where he meant to kill us both.
That's why he looked like that, that's why he had his gun."

General Dunsmore only stared blankly at him for a moment.

"Kill me? Kill you? What for?" he gasped.

"So that he might become Lord Chobham of Wreste Abbey instead of Lord
Chobham's poor relation," answered Rupert. "The poison attempt on uncle
which Walter discover