its own place. She turned again to the others,
foaming like a creature trapped.

"It is all lies, lies!"--then fell silent, her eyes sealed to the newly
written paper on the table under Saltire's hand. At last, she said
quietly: "I must, however, insist upon knowing what he has said about
me. What is written on that paper, Mr. Saltire?"

"If you insist, I will read it," he answered. "Though it is scarcely
in my province to do so."

"It is only fair that I should hear," she said, with great calmness.
And Saltire read out the terse phrases that bore upon them the stamp of
Death's hurrying hand.

"I am a native of the island Z---- in the West Indies. Isabel Saxby,
known as van Cannan, is my wife. While travelling to the Cape Colony
on some business of mine, she met van Cannan and his wife and stayed
with them at East London. When she did not return to Z----, I came to
look for her and found that, Mrs. van Cannan having died, she had
bigamously married the widower and come to live at Blue Aloes. I loved
her, and could not bear to be parted from her, so, through her
instrumentality, I came here as manager. The eldest boy was drowned
before my arrival. The youngest died six months later of a bite from
one of my specimen tarantulas. The third boy is, I expect, drowned
tonight. I take the blame of all these deaths and of Bernard van
Cannan's, if he does not return. It was only when all male van Cannans
were dead that Blue Aloes could be sold for a large sum enabling us to
return to Z----. We would have taken the little girls with us.

"With my dying breath, I take full blame for all on my shoulders. No
one is guilty but I.

"[Signed.] RICHARD SAXBY."

"Poor fellow!" said the listening woman gently. "Poor fellow to have
died with such terrible delusions torturing him!" She passed her hands
over her eyes, wiping away her tears and with them every last trace of
violence and anger. Subtly her face had changed back to the babylike,
laughing, sleepy face they all knew so well--the face that had held the
dead man in thrall and made Bernard van Cannan forget the mother of his
children.

"You will please give me that paper, Mr. Saltire," she pleaded, "and
you will please all of you forget the ravings of poor Dick Saxby. It
is true that I knew him in the past, and that he followed me here, but
the rest, as you must realize, are simply hallucinations of a poisoned
brain."

Andrew McNeil's dour face had g