s were full of you, and of the
burning of the Lady Jermyn!

"Now mark what happened. You know, of course, as well as I do; but I
wonder if you can even yet realize what it was to us! Our prisoner
hears that you are alive, and she turns upon Santos and tells him he is
welcome to silence her, but it will do us ne good now, as you know that
the ship was wilfully burned, and with what object. It is the single
blow she can strike in self-defence; but a shrewder one could scarcely
be imagined. She had talked to you, at the very last; and by that time
she did know the truth. What more natural than that she should confide
it to you? She had had time to tell you enough to hang the lot of us;
and you may imagine our consternation on hearing that she had told you
all she knew! From the first we were never quite sure whether to believe
it or not. That the papers breathed no suspicion of foul play was
neither here nor there. Scotland Yard might have seen to that. Then
we read of the morbid reserve which was said to characterize all your
utterances concerning the Lady Jermyn. What were we to do? What we no
longer dared to do was to take our gold-dust straight to the Bank. What
we did, you know.

"We ran round to Morecambe Bay, and landed the gold as we Rattrays had
landed lace and brandy from time immemorial. We left Eva in charge of
Jane Braithwaite, God only knows how much against my will, but we were
in a corner, it was life or death with us, and to find out how much you
knew was a first plain necessity. And the means we took were the only
means in our power; nor shall I say more to you on that subject than I
said five years ago in my poor old house. That is still the one part of
the whole conspiracy of which I myself am most ashamed.

"And now it only remains for me to tell you why I have written all this
to you, at such great length, so long after the event. My wife wished
it. The fact is that she wants you to think better of me than I deserve;
and I--yes--I confess that I should like you not to think quite as ill
of me as you must have done all these years. I was villain enough, but
do not think I am unpunished.

"I am an outlaw from my country. I am morally a transported felon. Only
in this no-man's land am I a free man; let me but step across the border
and I am worth a little fortune to the man who takes me. And we have had
a hard time here, though not so hard as I deserved; and the hardest part
of all..."

But you mus