as there that things went wrong. I was following cautiously, from
tree to tree, close to the river-bank, when my foot caught in a trail of
ground bramble, and I went headlong into the brushwood. Before I was well
on my feet, he had turned and was running back at me, his face white with
rage and alarm, and a revolver in his hand. And when he saw who it was,
he had the revolver at the full length of his arm, covering me.

"Go back!" he said, stopping and steadying himself.

"No!" said I.

"If you come a yard further, Moneylaws, I'll shoot you dead!" he
declared. "I mean it! Go back!"

"I'm not coming a foot nearer," I retorted, keeping where I was. "But I'm
not going back. And whenever you move forward, I'm following. I'm not
losing sight of you again, Mr. Meekin!"

He fairly started at that--and then he began looking on all sides of me,
as if to find out if I was accompanied. And all of a sudden he plumped
me with a question.

"Where is Hollins?" he asked. "I'll be bound you know!"

"Dead!" I answered him. "Dead, Mr. Meekin! As dead as Phillips, or as
Abel Crone. And the police are after you--all round--and you'd better
fling that thing into the Till there and come with me. You'll not get
away from me as easily now as you did yon time in your yacht."

It was then that he fired at me--from some twelve or fifteen yards'
distance. And whether he meant to kill me, or only to cripple me, I don't
know; but the bullet went through my left knee, at the lower edge of the
knee-cap, and the next thing I knew I was sprawling on all-fours on the
earth, and the next--and it was in the succeeding second, before even I
felt a smart--I was staring up from that position to see the vengeance
that fell on my would-be murderer in the very instant of his attempt on
me. For as he fired and I fell, a woman sprang out of the bushes at his
side, and a knife flashed, and then he too fell with a cry that was
something between a groan and a scream--and I saw that his assailant was
the Irishwoman Nance Maguire, and I knew at once who it was that had
killed Hollins.

But she had not killed Meekin. He rose like a badly wounded thing--half
rose, that is, as I have seen crippled animals rise, and he cried like a
beast in a trap, fighting with his hands. And the woman struck again
with the knife--and again he sank back, and again he rose, and ... I
shut my eyes, sick with horror, as she drove the knife into him for the
third time.

But that wa