ear to watch them any longer. I believed that he loved her in
his own way as sincerely as I did in mine. I believed that she detested
him for the detestable crime in which he had been concerned. I believed
that the opinion of him which she had expressed to his face, in my
hearing, was her true opinion, and I longed to hear her mitigate it ever
so little before he went. He won my sympathy as a gallant who valued
a kind word from his mistress more than life itself. I hoped earnestly
that that kind word would be spoken. But I had no desire to wait to hear
it. I felt an intruder. I would leave them alone together for the last
time. So I walked to the door, but, seeing a key in it, I changed
my mind, and locked it on the inside. In the hall I might become the
unintentional instrument of the squire's capture, though, so far as my
ears served me, it was still empty as we had left it. I preferred to run
no risks, and would have a look at the subterranean passage instead.

"I advise you to speak low," I said, "and not to be long. The place is
alive with the police. If they hear you all will be up."

Whether he heard me I do not know. I left him on his knees still, and
Eva with her face hidden in her hands.

The cellar was a strange scene to revisit within an hour of my
deliverance from that very torture-chamber. It had been something more
before I left it, but in it I could think only of the first occupant of
the camp-stool. The lantern still burned upon the floor. There was the
mattress, still depressed where I had lain face to face with insolent
death. The bullet was in the plaster; it could not have missed by the
breadth of many hairs. In the corner was the shallow grave, dug by
Harris for my elements. And Harris was dead. And Santos was dead. But
life and love were mine.

I would have gone through it all again!

And all at once I was on fire to be back in the library; so much so,
that half a minute at the manhole, lantern in hand, was enough for me;
and a mere funnel of moist brown earth--a terribly low arch propped with
beams--as much as I myself ever saw of the subterranean conduit between
Kirby House and the sea. But I understood that the curious may traverse
it for themselves to this day on payment of a very modest fee.

As for me, I returned as I had come after (say) five minutes' absence;
my head full once more of Eva, and of impatient anxiety for the wild
young squire's final flight; and my heart still singing wi