ill' and 'Burn'?"

Gray eyes and dark eyes met steadily, while the last match, reddening
the blood in his fingers, slowly burned out.

CHAPTER XV

KAU FAI

At the top of the nunnery stairs, Rudolph met them with awkward
ceremony, and with that smiling air of encouragement which a nurse might
use in trying cheerfully to deceive a sick man. Heywood laughed, without
mercy, at this pious fraud.

"Hallo, you Red-Bristled Ghost!" he cried. "We came early--straight from
our walk. Are the rest coming? And did my cook arrive to help yours?"

Their host, carried by assault, at once became less mournful.

"The cook is here," he replied, "by the kitchen-sounds. They disagree, I
think. I have asked everybody. We should have a full dinner-table."

"Good," said his friend; and then whispering, as they followed Miss
Drake to the living-room, "I say, don't act as though you expected the
ghost of Banquo."

In the bare, white loft, by candle-light, Sturgeon sat midway in some
long and wheezy tale, to which the padre and his wife listened with true
forbearance. Greetings over, the stodgy annalist continued. The story
was forgotten as soon as ended; talk languished; and even by the quaking
light of the candles, it was plain that the silence was no mere waiting
solemnity before meat, but a period of tension.

The relief came oddly. Up from the road sounded a hubbub of voices, the
tramp of feet, and loud halloos.

"By Jove!" cried Sturgeon, like a man who fears the worst; and for all
his bulk, he was first at the window.

A straggling file of lanterns, borne by some small army, came jogging
and crowding to a halt under the walls. Yellow faces gleamed faintly,
bare heads bobbed, and men set down burdens, grunting. Among the
vanguard an angry voice scolded in a strange tongue. "_Burra suar!_" it
raged; then hailed imperiously, "_Ko hai?_"

Where the lanterns clustered brightest, an active little figure in white
waved a helmet, crying,--

"On deck! Where the devil does Maurice Heywood live?"

"I'm up here," called that young man.

For reply, the stranger began to skip among his cohorts, jerking out his
white legs like a dancing marionette. Then, with a sudden drop-kick, he
sent the helmet flickering high into the darkness over the wall.

"Here we come!" he shouted, in hilarious warning. The squabbling
retinue surged after him through the gate, and one by one the lanterns
disappeared under the covered way.

"It's the