o recognize, had not her
skipper sat facing me on the squire's right. Yes, there was Captain
Harris in the flesh, eating heartily between great gulps of wine,
instead of feeding the fishes as all the world supposed. And nearer
still, nearer me than any, with his back to my window but his chair
slued round a little, so that he also could see that door, and I his
profile, sat Joaquin Santos with his cigarette!

None spoke; all seemed waiting; and all were silent but the captain,
whose vulgar champing reached me through the crazy lattice, as I stood
spellbound and petrified without.

They say that a drowning man lives his life again before the last; but
my own fight with the sea provided me with no such moments of vivid and
rapid retrospect as those during which I stood breathless outside the
lighted windows of Kirby Hall. I landed again. I was dogged day and
night. I set it down to nerves and notoriety; but took refuge in a
private hotel. One followed me, engaged the next room, set a watch on
all my movements; another came in by the window to murder me in my
bed; no party to that, the first one nevertheless turned the outrage to
account, wormed himself into my friendship on the strength of it, and
lured me hither, an easy prey. And here was the gang of them, to meet
me! No wonder Rattray had not let me see him off at the station; no
wonder I had not been followed that night. Every link I saw in its
right light instantly. Only the motive remained obscure. Suspicious
circumstances swarmed upon my slow perception: how innocent I had been!
Less innocent, however, than wilfully and wholly reckless: what had it
mattered with whom I made friends? What had anything mattered to me?
What did anything matter--

I thought my heart had snapped!

Why were they watching that door, Joaquin Santos and the young squire?
Whom did they await? I knew! Oh, I knew! My heart leaped, my blood
danced, my eyes lay in wait with theirs. Everything began to matter
once more. It was as though the machinery of my soul, long stopped, had
suddenly been set in motion; it was as though I was born again.

How long we seemed to wait I need not say. It cannot have been many
moments in reality, for Santos was blowing his rings of smoke in the
direction of the door, and the first that I noticed were but dissolving
when it opened--and the best was true! One instant I saw her very
clearly, in the light of a candle which she carried in its silver stick;
then